


Incandescence

by WanderingJane



Category: Avengers: Age of Ultron - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Again, Brief mentions of torture, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, canon-divergence, clint breaking his nose, possible spoilers for Age of Ultron, spoilers for Captain America: Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 07:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1595855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingJane/pseuds/WanderingJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda-centric fic that traces Wanda and Pietro's journey from the end of CA:TWS through the beginning of Avengers: Age of Ultron</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Cold, rough stone bites into her skin as she claws at the ground underneath her. She tries to stay still, to keep a dazed look painted across her features. Only her hands give her away as they tremble and scrape across the floor as another scream echoes in the walls of her cell. 

It's worse tonight, the screaming, louder and more desperate. 

Keeping still has always been hard for her brother. Even when they were children, Pietro was always running, talking, jumping, never once stopping to take a moment to breathe. Wanda remembers chasing after him as a child, forever trying to catch up. 

It sickens her to think how something that had once been as natural as breathing to him is used against him so cruelly, how his own body rebels against him whenever he tries to stop for a moment to rest his aching muscles, to gulp a desperate lungful of air before he's forced to move again. 

No one knows that she can hear him, but Pietro's screams are loud enough to penetrate through both the stone walls and the thick haze the drugs cast over her. They keep her drugged because bad things happen around her - locks break, light bulbs shatter, the guards that bring food mysteriously get hurt. They slip a concoction of chemical into her blood to dull her mind, but it doesn't work, not anymore, not when she starts to burn every time she hears Pietro scream. The hotter she burns, the less the drugs work. The hotter she burns, the more frightened she is. She doesn’t understand what’s happening to her. All she knows is that the cold fear that washes over her makes her burn bright and _things_ \- terrible, awful, impossible things - happen around her. 

She wishes it would stop. She doesn’t want any of this. 

It's quiet now. Pietro's either fallen asleep or passed out, and Wanda's grateful that he can rest, even if it's only for a little while. 

Time stretches by slowly, second by agonizing second. 

The sound of falling rain lulls her. It isn’t like one of the storms she was so terrified as a child, where she would run to Pietro’s side, shaking and crying, and throw her skinny arms around him. This storm is soft and quiet. Peaceful. She can’t understand how anything can be peaceful and beautiful outside, not when everything is so horrible inside, inside her prison, inside her head. 

It’s pitch-black; the only light source is the weak beam of moonlight that streams in from one small, dirty window. She tilts her face to the light and closes her eyes. Everything fades away except for the rhythmic _drip, drip, drip_ of the rain. 

She must have fallen asleep because when she opens her eyes, the rain has stopped and the room is flooded with artificial light. She squints her eyes and holds up a hand to shield herself from the harshness of the light. It's almost painful after being kept in the dark for so long. There are no light bulbs in her cell; they always explode around her. The light comes from the open door. Wanda shrinks back, pressing herself further against the wall when she hears footsteps. 

Baron von Stucker walks into her cell with precise, deliberate footsteps, his arms clasped behind his back.

“Good morning, Wanda,” he says. Wanda understands German well enough, but doesn’t answer. She keeps absolutely still, refusing to even turn her head toward him. It isn’t difficult; her muscles have gone stiff and cold. Strucker doesn’t seem bothered by her silence. “Today is an exciting day, is it not?” He pauses to see if she will answer. When she doesn’t, he continues, “I have come to personally inform you that we will be performing another procedure, one that we have very high hopes for.” 

A surge of terror wells up in Wanda and she feels that strange heat start to bubble in her chest. It's hovers there for a few painful seconds before it starts to spread outward, racing for her hands. One of the guards that flank Strucker rushes over, roughly grabs her arm, and forces a needle into her skin. It must be a higher dose than what they usually give her because the effect is almost instantaneous, and Wanda goes cold and numb.

“Now, now, Wanda," Strucker says, "We have been through this many times. It is in your best interest to behave yourself. After all, you would not want anything to happen to Pietro, now would you?” She hates how he says Pietro’s name, like he’s sneering and disgusted and pleased all at once. She clenches her eyes shut, and tries to cover her ears, but her arms refuse to move. 

“Come now,” she hears him say. Cold hands grip her arms and pull her to her feet. She tries to move, but her legs buckle and she starts sinking to the floor. The man on her right yanks her back up and keeps a steady, painful hold on her as they drag her out of the cell. 

Where her cell is dark and dank, the corridors outside are illuminated with bright, fluorescent light and she has to squint against the sting of it. It’s a sea of white. White lights, white walls, white floors. Clinical. Dead. She longs for the bright colors of Transia. The lush greens of the trees and plants. The pinks, yellows purples, _reds_ of the flowers. She hasn’t seen the place that was once her home in many years, not since she and Pietro were forced to flee, but she still misses it. Strucker and the guards talk in quiet German, but instead of trying to decipher what they’re saying, all Wanda can think about are the sounds of her friends and family laughing around a campfire, the warm glow illuminating the faces of all the people she loved. That was before she learned to fear fire, before it took her parent’s lives, before she and Pietro had to run, no longer as a childish game but done in order to survive. 

She tries to hold on to the memory of Pietro’s face as she stumbles, half-blind down the white corridor. She tries to remember the sound of his laughter, a sound that she hasn’t heard in far too long, a sound that has since been replaced by screams. 

The procession stops in front of a dark grey door, and she immediately freezes in recognition. It’s _that_ room. It’s going to be that kind of procedure. 

Strucker nods his head sharply, his mild expression gone, and the guards open the door. Wanda starts struggling half-heartedly against the men’s arms, but Strucker gives her a pointed look. Wanda glances inside the room and sags in understanding. Pietro is there, strapped to a long chair. He’s vibrating so fast his arms and legs blur. An armed guard stands beside Pietro, his gun pointed at her brother’s head. Wanda slumps forward in resignation. Even if she could fight off the drugs, she can’t risk her brother’s life. She lets the guards push her toward the other chair and tries not to cry as they tie her down, but the men pull the bonds tight enough to make her gasp. 

Pietro stops vibrating when he hears her. His eyes widen momentarily before his lips curl to bare his teeth and he starts pulling at his restraints, shouting at the guards in broken German. Another armed guard calmly moves to Wanda’s side. Pietro freezes and falls silent, but his eyes remain fixed on her. 

Wanda takes in the sight of her brother, the sheen of sweat covering his face and bare arms, the dark circles under his eyes, the white streaks in his hair. He looks older, and she’s even more terrified for them both when she realizes that she has no idea how much time has passed since they were taken in. She’d lost count after the first four months. 

Strucker laughs under his breath, the sound magnified in the silent room. He rests his hands on Wanda’s shoulders, and she has to bite back the bile that rises in her throat. She glances at Pietro, and is both comforted and afraid of the anger in his eyes. 

“You must be on your best behavior today. I tell you this because I care. If something were to go wrong, well, I’d hate to lose either of you. You're my greatest success.” His voice is quiet, his tone mild, but the threat is still there. He smiles the briefest of smiles when he adds, "Both of you."

He huffs another laugh as he moves to a small, adjacent room so he can observe them from behind the safety of a thick window. A doctor steps forward and at Strucker’s signal, begins the preparations for the procedure. 

Wanda tries to block it all out and focuses instead on Pietro. Her entire world narrows to down to him. She sees the desperation in Pietro’s eyes, the frantic need to break free, to take her, and run away as fast as he can. His eyes never stray from hers, not even when the doctor brings out the scepter, the magic scepter with the glowing blue light that has caused them so much pain. She never thought magic was real before, that it was only found in the fairy tales and stories her mother used to tell her, but now she knows better and she desperately wishes that it wasn’t real, that magic was confined to her childhood stories. 

The doctor and his assistants move towards Pietro first. The scepter has been connected to wires and machines, and an ominous buzzing sound starts to fill the room. Wanda’s breath catches in her throat when the sharp tip of the scepter touches Pietro’s chest. His screams cut straight through her. She feels the magic trying to work its way into his body, into his head, as clearly as if it were happening to her. It’s the first time she’s had to watch him go through this. They’ve always done the procedures separately, but Strucker must be getting impatient. 

Wanda can’t breathe. She’s gasping and choking for air, and she tugs desperately at her restraints, ignoring the armed guard next to her. 

“Stop!” she screams over and over again. When they do finally stop, it's only to move onto her, but Wanda's shaking and sobbing and staring at Pietro’s slumped body. She doesn’t see his chest move, but she knows that the steady _beep, beep, beep_ of the machine behind him means he’s still alive. She’s so focused on Pietro that she doesn’t notice it’s her turn until the scepter touches her chest and a cold, freezing, emptying agony tears through every part of her. The scepter’s power feels like it’s trying to draw her out of her own body. She breaks out in a cold sweat, and she feels like she’s been drained. The voices fade away slowly, as if someone were lowering the volume on a television, and the room begins to grow dark.

Just as she starts growing more and more still and her mind becomes open to the scepter’s influence, she feels something start to burn in her chest, an odd respite from the numbing cold of the scepter’s magic. It’s only a speck, smaller than a seed, but as it starts to grow, it does something strange to her head. The scepter’s whispered words that command her to follow Strucker’s order fall silent, and the haze that had been leftover from the drugs evaporates. The cold, emptiness is overrun by an agonizing fire. Everything burns, burns, burns inside her, and the tug of the magic almost overwhelms her, but she can think clearly for the first time in ages. Pietro's face flashes in her head in perfect detail, right down to the arrogant twist of his lips. It’s that image that grounds her against the magnetic pull of the scepter’s magic and the two opposing forces warring inside her.

She wrenches her eyes open, and even though she can barely see through the tears, she looks for her brother. He’s still for once and the unnaturalness of it makes the red hot light burn brighter inside her chest. She feels in grow and expand inside of her, racing through her veins until red and pink lights bloom in her bound hands. 

“It’s working.” 

“Will the restraints hold her?” 

"Keep her steady." 

Clammy hands tug tighter on the bonds, but it’s all in vain. Light explodes from her hands and floods the room in a violent wave, shattering equipment, machines, and glasses. The room is plunged into darkness. Wanda bites back her horror at what's she done. Shaking, she tries to pull herself free from the bonds, but panicked voices shout around her and strong arms grip her roughly and force her lower into the chair. 

There are twin pained cries behind her and she's let go. 

“Wanda?” Pietro whispers near her. She tries to answer him but her voice refuses to cooperate. His sweaty hands grope around her arms and legs until he’s pulled her free. “Quick, hurry,” he says helping her to her feet. 

They clasp hands as they navigate their way in the dark. A hand grabs her ankle and tries to pull her down, but she kicks it away. As soon as they push the heavy steel door open, the emergency lights come back on, and Wanda can't help looking at the chaos behind her. Two of the guards, the ones who’d trying holding down on the chair, are slumped on the floor, unconscious. A few others kneel, cradling their injured limbs. 

Another guard and two of the doctors rush toward them wielding guns and needles. Pietro lifts Wanda into his arms and charges outside, his body moving at an impossible speed. She wraps her arms around his neck like she used to do when she was younger and afraid of the thunderstorms, and looks behind them. Guards, doctors, scientists are all rushing towards them, fear and hatred in their eyes. 

“Do not shoot them,” Strucker yells. “We cannot afford to kill them.” 

Pietro’s speed picks up and the men and women blur behind them. More guards appear in their path, but Pietro dodges past all of them. When they turn a corner, one of them manages to grab Wanda’s hair and pulls her from her brother’s grasp. She falls to the floor with a painful _thud_. The guard turns her gun to the side to hit Wanda with the blunt end of it. Wanda instinctively raises her arms to protect herself, but another surge of red light erupts from her outstretched hand and the woman is thrown backwards. Pietro arrives in a blur, picks Wanda up again, and continues to run. His arms shake and she can hear him gasping and panting. 

They burst through doorway after doorway, until they finally reach a large metal door with a sign that she’s almost positive says ‘Exit.’ Pietro skids to a halt and Wanda jumps down from his arms. No matter how hard Pietro throws himself against it, the door won’t open. They need a keycard to open it. There are no windows. The door is the only way out. It has to open.

Pietro screams loudly in frustration, alerting everyone nearby where they are. Wanda’s desperation claws at her throat, choking her until it’s impossible for her to breathe. She can’t go back into that cell. She can’t be separated from Pietro again. The anguish grows and grows until another small spark of light pops from her hand.

"Pietro," she gasps out, holding her hands away from her body, terrified at what she may do. She can't control whatever's happening, and it frightens her almost as much as Strucker and his men do. 

She starts to shake as they light grows bigger brighter in her hands until it spills forward onto the door. It pulses for a second then unlocks with a quiet _beep_. Wanda and Pietro stare at each other in disbelief before they push through and run outside. 

Loud footsteps echo behind them, and a swarm of guards surround them, but Pietro picks up Wanda once again and runs faster than he had before. He blurs right past them at a dizzying speed and Wanda has to close her eyes and fight down nausea. When she opens her eyes, they’ve stopped running and Pietro is staring down at her with concern. She pushes herself out of his arms and lets herself fall to the floor. It hurts but she’s too busy throwing up to care. Pietro falls to the floor next to her and pulls her tangled, sweaty hair out of her face. 

“Wanda?” he asks when she finished. His voice sounds strange. Rough and broken, from all the screaming he's done. She’s shaking and crying, but she turns and pulls him into a hug. She hears him sniffle and his tears spill onto her neck. He pulls back and scrubs at his eyes. “We have to keep moving. They won’t be far behind.” He helps her to her feet, and they hold onto each other as they walk unsteadily down the unfamiliar streets. 

“Where are we?” she asks. 

“I don’t know, but we’re not far from the prison. I can’t keep running, so we'll have to hide for a while,” he says. He doesn't tell her that he's tired, that running at his incredible speed has left him almost to the point of collapsing, but he doesn't need to. She already knows.

She smoothes out the creases between this eyebrows, and tugs him down the street. They move as fast as they can through the darkest and smallest streets and alleys, avoiding the larger boulevards whenever possible. 

Pietro collapses in small alley between a coffee shop and a deli. He groans pitifully and his eyes flutter closed. She’s terrified and for a moment she thinks he’s stopped breathing, but his chest rises and falls steadily. He needs rest and food. They both do. 

Wanda digs through the bags in the alley until she finds a large, dirty piece of cloth that’s riddled with holes. She shakes it out and drapes it over Pietro in the hopes that it will warm his tired muscles. She doesn’t want to leave him, not after they’ve been separated for so long, but he'll need to eat when he wakes up. 

She takes a step towards the street and sways. She needs to eat, too. With one last glance back at Pietro, she steels herself and walks quickly down the streets. It’s too risky to go to the deli next door, so she walks several streets down where the smaller streets open up into a larger ones until she comes to an outdoor marketplace. People bustle, laugh, talk, haggle, argue all around her, and she feels lost for a moment. Everything inside of her screams danger. The exposure, the crowds of people, it's almost too much for her, and she's tempted to go back. 

But she and Pietro really need food if they're to keep running from Strucker. She moves further into the marketplace, painfully conscious of her bare feet and torn dress.

An older woman with a kind face walks past her and Wanda musters up the courage ask, “Excuse me, c-could you tell me the date?” Her German is heavily accented, but the woman understands her.

“6th of June, dear.” 

“The year?” 

The woman gives her a strange look before slowly answering, “2014.” Wanda starts and she quickly backs away, accidentally bumping into the person behind her and spilling their bags.

“S-Sorry,” she stutters out. The man gives her an angry look, but doesn’t say anything as he picks up his fallen things. She moves away from him and runs into a nearby shop. As soon as she’s inside, she slides to the floor and buries her head in her knees. She knows she can't cry because it'll draw attention to herself, but her breathes comes in quick, sharp gasps and her hands shake and sweat. She rips away the bandages and wipes her hands on her dress. 

2014\. It’s been two years since she and Pietro were taken. Two years in a cell. Two years of being hurt, starved, separated from the world and from each other. And it was all her fault. It was always her fault. She bites down hard on her lip until the metallic taste of blood fills her mouth. 

“Can I help you?” a woman’s voice says. Wanda looks up so quickly that her head spins. A young woman stands tall in front of her, hands on her hips and her mouth turned down into a frown. “If you are not going to purchase anything, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” 

Wanda stands up shakily, afraid that the woman will call the police. The woman looks at Wanda’s bare feet and clothes. She crinkles her nose and looks like she’s going to say something else, but Wanda turns and flees from the store. She wants to go back to Pietro, but knows she can’t return empty-handed. She darts into the crowd and tries to blend in. 

There are so many people, and while most of them try to be careful with their belongings, some are careless. A tall, handsome man with golden hair is leaning against a stand, smiling and talking amiably with the pretty vendor. The woman looks at him from under her eyelashes and leans over to lightly touch the man’s arm as she laughs at something he said. His jacket sits abandoned on an empty spot on the table. Wanda approaches the stand and waits until the man points to something behind the woman’s head before reaching out and snatching the jacket. She runs in the opposite direction and hides between a large statue of a couple embracing. She hugs the jacket close to her chest and tries to calm her breathing. When she doesn’t hear screams or angry shouts, she puts the jacket on and walks back into the crowd. 

A man with a large mustache proudly displays loaves freshly baked bread. They sit enticingly in wicker baskets and smell so good that Wanda finds herself walking toward them, her hand outstretched. She glances back at the man’s face and her hand freezes. He's distracted by customers. She could easily slip a loaf into her pocket without him noticing, but guilt gnaws away at her. How can she steal from him? How can she steal at all? Taking the jacket to cover herself was bad enough, and now she has to take more. Guilt eats at her until she’s ready to turn around and go right back to Pietro, but the thought of her brother, exhausted, hungry, and passed out in that cold, dirty alley forces her to keep going. They did not escape from Hydra's clutches only to die from starvation. 

She still can’t bring herself to take the man’s bread, though. Instead, she moves to another stand, one filled with fruits and vegetables. Two men are haggling with the vendor about the price of strawberries. Pretending to inspect the quality of the fruits with one hand, Wanda slips several strawberries and a couple pears with her other hand into jacket pockets. She moves on before the vendor notices her. 

At another stall, Wanda takes advantage of a frazzled vendor who’s too busy trying to talk to several customers to stuff a small loaf of brown bread into the jacket. She still has room in one pocket. Maybe she can find something else to bring to Pietro. 

She makes her way to a stall selling green vegetables and carrots, but the vendor takes one look at her and yells, “Hey, you! Get away from here!” 

People turn to look at her, some narrowing their eyes in suspicion, others wrinkling their noses at her appearance. Startled, Wanda, turns and walks away as quickly as she can without running. She keeps her head down, stuffs her hands into the jacket’s pockets, and hurries to the edge of the market. When she passes by the clothes shop she was kicked out of, she catches a glimpse of herself in the window’s reflection. She freezes and stares at herself for a brief moment. She has to wave to the reflection just to make sure it is her because the girl in the window looks nothing her.

A distant shout startles her and she darts away. As she’s getting closer to where she left Pietro, a hand reaches out and pulls her back. Sure that it's one of Strucker's men, she panics and energy starts thrumming inside her, but it dies abruptly when she sees Pietro's worried face.

“Where have you been?” he asks, his voice louder than it probably should be.

“Shhh,” Wanda says and pulls him to the side. “I was out getting food. See?” She tugs some of the fruits from the pockets to show him. The strawberries have gotten a little squished, but it doesn’t matter. She takes one of them and pops it into Pietro’s open mouth, and eats one herself. She can't remember ever had eaten something so good. She smiles at Pietro as she finishes the fruit. The part of her lip that she’d bitten through earlier breaks open and bleeds again, but she licks it away without a thought. 

Pietro looks torn between wanting to be angry and being happy about the food. He sighs and reaches for a pear. “We have to stay together, Wanda.”

“I know. But we both needed food.” The adrenaline from the escape and from stealing food is starting to fade, and Wanda feels faint and weary. Pietro sighs again, quieter and with fondness, and leads her back to the alley he’d collapsed in. They eat the rest of the food in silence. When they finish, he pulls Wanda close to him and covers them with the blanket. It’s smelly and itches, but Wanda can’t find it in herself to care. 

“Sleep for a while. They’ll be looking for us, and we’ll have to leave soon. They’ll probably expect us to head East, towards home, but we’ll go West.” 

Wanda has a million questions: Is he alright? How does his speed work? What if she hurts him or makes something bad happen? How are they going to hide from Strucker’s men? It all buzzes in her brain until Pietro whispers, “Sleep.” 

Wanda forces her hand to unclench from the blanket and nestles into Pietro's side. She counts his steady breaths until she starts to drift off. She’s terrified of being captured again. She’s afraid of the power she carries inside of her. She doesn’t know how she and Pietro will survive without money or food or help. But they have each other again, and nothing will ever keep them apart. 


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a spark. It burns deep inside her chest, in the space right between her ribs and her heart. It pulse slightly out of synch with her heartbeats until it starts to expand, slowly inching toward her neck, her arms, her legs, her toes. She digs her fingers into the metal arm rests hard enough that her nails start to crack. Hot tears stream down her cheeks and burn her face. Her breath catches in throat right before the spark reaches her hands. 

Blinding white light tinged with reds and pinks explodes from her bound hands and inundates the room. She throws her head back and screams, but she can’t hear anything over the ringing in her ears. 

When the burning fades away, she opens her eyes and immediately gags at the sight of blackened walls, unconscious men and women, and frantic doctors trying to put out small fires. She did this. She made lights explode, made fires ignite, made people loss consciousness. A very small part of her, the part that reminds her of all that she and her people have suffered, feels vindicated, pleased that she has hurt them, but it fades away almost immediately and she's left sickened. 

One of the doctors stumbles towards her, clutching his bloody arm and wielding a syringe in front of him. She tries to move away from him, but she’s bound to the chair. She feels the spark start to burn again when –

“Wanda!” She jerks awake. Pietro doesn’t waste any time, pulling her to her feet and shoving the jacket towards her. “They’re here. They’ve found us,” he says. 

“W-what? Where?” 

“Four blocks over. I was getting food when I saw them. I don’t think they saw me, but we have to go. Get on,” Pietro says, hunching over. 

“What?” 

“Get on so I can run us out of here.” Wanda leaps up, wraps her arms around Pietro’s neck, and braces her knees on his hips. “Hang on,” he says. She hears him exhale shakily. When he starts to run, she closes her eyes tight, already anticipating the dizziness from the speed. 

Except that there is no dizziness, no wind cutting her arms, no _whooshing_ sound as everything speeds by. She opens her eyes to see that the world isn’t blurring by in a sickening mix of shapes and colors because Pietro’s running at normal speed. 

“Pietro?” 

He runs down another street before stopping and letting her get off. His paces back and forth, his face crumpled in worry. 

“I don’t understand. Why isn’t it working?” His voice is loud and carries down the streets. Wanda looks over her shoulder, half expecting Hydra agents to bear down on them. Pietro’s breathing fast and twisting his hands into his hair. “It was working fine yesterday. Why can’t I run?” 

“When you went to get food this morning –”

“I walked.” At her confused look, he adds defensively, “My legs are sore, Wanda.” Her hands shake and her legs feel wobbly, but she reaches out and takes his hand. 

“It’s all right, Pietro. It's fine, but we have to go,” she tells him. They hurry down streets in a part of the city that looks like a mish-mash between older building and shiny new ones. 

“This way,” Pietro says over his shoulder to her. Even without his super speed, he’s still faster than her. Wanda grits her teeth and tries to catch up, ignoring her burning lungs and aching legs. They turn a sharp corner and head into a deserted lot. Pietro’s eyes dart around as if looking for someone, but the streets are abandoned. Only in the distance can the sounds of the rising day be heard. “Can you unlock it?” 

“What?” 

“Can you unlock the door like you did in the prison?” Pietro’s eyes are desperate and impatient. 

Fear works its way up her throat. She doesn't want to have to use her powers, but she knows she has to try. For Pietro. For both of them. 

Wanda gives him a tight nod and exhales slowly, trying to ignite the spark inside her. Her hands clench from the effort and her vision starts to dim, but the light doesn’t start to burn. She shakes her head and tries again. Nothing. Her hands drop to her sides. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine. Keep an eye out.” Pietro circles the area until he finds a long, cylindrical piece of rusted metal. He hits the car window with the metal twice. The glass shatters, and he reaches in and unlocks the door. The noise is heightened in the silence and Wanda is sure the Hydra agents will run around the corner at any moment. 

“Get in!” Pietro says, already inside and fumbling with something under the dashboard. Wanda runs around to the other door and climbs in. 

“Can you start it?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He’s tugging at the wires under the dashboard. Pietro had never even driven a car. She doubts he has any idea what he's doing, but she still feels safer inside the car. 

“Maybe I can try to –” The door on Wanda’s side is wrenched open and someone drags her out of the car and throws her on the floor. Someone else pulls her to her feet and tries to bind her hands, but Wanda kicks her legs back as hard as she can. She looks over the car and sees Pietro struggling against another small group of black-clad agents, the red octopus-like logo stitched into their uniforms. Hydra. They've been found. 

Someone grabs a fistful of Wanda’s hair and pulls her back. A woman with hard blue eyes tries to fasten odd-looking handcuffs on her wrists, but Wanda kicks the woman’s shin and ducks under her flailing arms. Other agents reach out, their arms like tentacles trying to ensnare Wanda, but she darts around them. 

“Pietro!” she screams. One agent has Pietro’s arm twisted behind him. Two more are trying to grab his legs. Wanda rushes forward and jumps onto one of the agent's back. She wraps her legs around his waist and hits her fists repeatedly, awkwardly, against his head, his shoulders, his back. When that doesn't work, she dig her nails into his neck and scalp and pulls as hard as she can. “Let him go!” 

The man reaches behind him, grips Wanda’s arm, flips her over his shoulder, and throws her roughly to the ground. She looks up in horror and pain, Pietro’s screams drowning everything out, and is sure that they’re going to be captured. For a moment, Wanda wishes with all her heart that she could control the red light, the spark, that she could force it out and use it to save her and her brother. She wrenches her uninjured arm forward and tries once more to coax the light out. 

Nothing happens. 

“Your magic not working anymore, little witch?” The man taunts her, but she can see the naked relief written on his face. 

He reaches forward to grab her, but something small and fast sinks into the ground between her and the agent. She only gets a small glimpse of it before it beeps twice and explodes, thick grey smoke clouding the air. 

“Pietro?” She staggers forward, reaching out blindly. 

“Here,” he says. 

“We have to –”

“Run.” 

They sprint away from the chaos and head toward the smaller streets, but more Hydra agents lie in wait. They turn onto a different street, one that looks empty. 

A pale hand reaches out and latches weakly onto her wrist, but she brusquely shakes it off. They reach one of Hydra’s cars and pull the driver’s side door open. A small man is inside, holding on to the wheel hard enough that his knuckles are white. 

“S-stay back!” 

He tries to reach for something next to him, but Pietro hits him with his fists and pulls him out of the car. The man writhes on the floor, moaning and clutching his eye, but Pietro jumps over him and pulls Wanda into the car. The keys are in the ignition, and Pietro quickly turns the car on and after a few unsuccessful tries, manages to drive forward. 

“Did you see what it was, the thing that exploded? I thought they weren't trying to kill us,” Pietro says. 

“I don’t know, but I don't think it was a bomb.” She hesitates before adding, “It looked like an arrow.” Pietro takes his eyes off the road and turns to look at her in disbelief. 

“An arrow?” 

"Look out!” she yells. 

Hydra agents, both on foot and in cars that look identical to the one they’re in, rush in from all sides and block their path. Pietro turns the car sharply to the right, the wheels screeching and burning. 

The terror forms a knot in Wanda’s throat. Her hands shake and she has to press them together between her knees. Her feet jerk and her bare toes rub against something cold. She glances down to see it’s the agent’s gun, the one he had been reaching for before Pietro hit him. She could take it. She could open the window and use it against the men following them. Maybe she would kill one of them. 

The car jumbles as they drive over a particularly unsteady part of the road, and Wanda’s hands fall forward. As she closes them around the cool metal, panic and shame jumble together in her stomach. The gun lies heavy in her hands. She knows she can’t do it. She can't take a life. 

But that doesn't mean the gun is useless. 

Stealing herself with determination, she shifts the gun to one hand and starts lowering the window with the other. 

Pietro looks over at her movements. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks, his eyes wide. Wanda ignores him and holds onto the door handle. A man climbs out of the window in the Hydra car behind them. He’s smirking as he hoists a large gun onto his shoulder. Wind blows her hair away from her eyes as she finds her balance. 

“Wanda, no!” Pietro tries to pull her back in, but she shrugs him off. Before the man can shoot at them, she pulls her arm back and throws the gun as hard and straight as she can. Her aim has never be all that good, and the chances that she’ll actually make contact with anything are small. 

She hits the man dead on. The gun falls out of his hand and when it collides with the tires, it goes off. The small explosion is enough the derail the car. It skids and slides and when it finally stops, it’s blocks the small road so that the other cars can’t get by. 

Shaking, Wanda pulls herself back into the car. Her heart is racing and ready to burst out of her chest. Her stomach rolls with nausea. She turns to ask Pietro is he’s alright, but his eyes are fixed on the rear view mirror. 

She half-heartedly tugs on his arm. “Watch the road,” she says. 

Pietro's eyes flick back to her. “How did you do that?” 

“I don’t know,” she says, her voice small. 

They’re quiet for a long time, both too tense and too afraid to talk. They only stop once to ask a woman selling flowers on the street how to get to the nearest highway, one that would take them out of Germany. The woman points them in the right direction with a smile. As they're about to pull away, she calls out to them and gives Wanda a yellow flower. 

"For luck and a safe journey," she says. Wanda takes the flower with a shaky smile, touches the woman’s hand, and thanks her. 

When they drive away, Pietro’s eyes are on the road in front of him but there's a small smile on his otherwise serious face. 

They don’t stop at any of the rest areas along the way. It’s only when they’ve crossed the border into Austria that Pietro pulls out of the highway and into a normal street, the car lurching as Pietro tries to park it. While Wanda goes to find a bathroom, Pietro sneaks away and comes back with two small plastic-wrapped loaves of bread and a bottle of water. 

“I’m sorry. It’s all I could get. I didn’t want to risk getting caught.” His mouth is drawn tight and he runs his hand through his messy hair several times. 

Their eyes dart around nervously as they climb back into the car. Wanda puts the water bottle in the cup holder between them and hands Pietro one of the breads. They eat their small breakfast with relish, trying to both eat as quickly as possible and savor each bite at the same time. 

“Thank you,” Wanda says when she finishes. She wants to say more, but as she looks over at Pietro, she finds herself startled by his appearance. His eyes meet hers, and they stare at each other for several long moments. It’s the first time they’ve had a moment to catch their breath since they escaped. It’s the first time in years they’ve have a moment to themselves, no guards, no doctors, no one to observe them or yell at them. She notices the small wrinkles around Pietro’s eyes, fine lines that have appeared far too soon on her brother’s face. His eyes are sunken, his face pale and gaunt. Her glance drawn to his trembling hands, and it reminds her of his speed. She wonders if that’s what made the white sprout in his hair. She hates the white streaks. They’re a reminder of what’s been done to her brother, to them both. She reaches out and twists a lock of white hair around her finger. Pietro catches her wrist. 

“What are you doing?” His voice is tinged with amusement. 

“Admiring your new hair style,” she says with false lightness. She tries to smile at him, but it feels forced. 

“What are you talking about?” He pulls away from her, his forehead wrinkled in confusion. 

“Your hair. The white…” She trails off when she realizes that Pietro has no idea what she’s talking about. She remembers the shock she felt when she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the shop window. He probably hasn’t seen himself in a mirror in a long time, either. 

“Look,” she says as she pulls down the car’s sun visor and flips it open. 

Pietro turns his head to look at himself and explodes, “What the fuck? What the _fuck_?” He touches the small white areas, his face filled with disgust. “How the hell - ” 

“It doesn’t look bad,” she adds quickly, trying to reassure him. Pietro looks at her in disbelief before turning back to the small mirror. He shoves the visor back up, and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry,” Wanda says. 

“It’s not your fault.” His voice is rough and quiet. She reaches out, tugs his arm away from his chest, and holds his hand between hers. It's almost funny, his large hand cradled between her small ones. She runs her scraped palms and fingers over the bruised skin of his knuckles. 

“Pietro. Pietro, look at me.” He rolls his eyes, but he angles his body toward hers. “We survived. Everyone else they took, they… they're gone. Dead." She swallows with difficulty but keeps going. "We, and now we’ve escaped. _You_ got us out of there. We’d still be stuck there if it weren’t for you.” 

“You’re the one that blew up the room,” he says with a scoff. 

“I did not," Wanda interrupts, horrified and half-afraid that it's true. "I don’t know what I did.” She lets go of Pietro’s hand and stares at her own bruised hands. “I’m afraid of what’s happening to us,” she admits. “I’m afraid of – what if I hurt you?” She covers her face with her hands and bites back the sob that's trying to force its way out of her throat. 

Pietro makes a distressed noise and reaches over to pull her to his chest. “Everything’s going to be fine. You won't hurt me, and I won’t let anything happen to you.” 

Her voice is muffled against his shirt as she adds, “I won’t let anything happen to you, either. I promise.” Pietro sighs and hugs her tighter before pulling away. 

“We should get going. Don’t want them to catch up to us.” 

They pull back into the highway and drive East, heading toward Salzburg. It’s still early in the morning and there aren’t very many cars on the roads. 

“Where are we going?” Wanda asks after a while. 

“I don’t know. I wanted us to go West, maybe to France or even England, but when they found us I was only thinking of getting away. Austria’s border was the closest.” 

“We’ve never been to Vienna. I’ve heard it’s very beautiful,” she says with a wistful smile. A woman from their camp had traveled to Vienna once, and her stories had enchanted a young Wanda. 

Pietro laughs and says, “Alright, we’ll go to Vienna.” 

For a second, elation fills Wanda's chest, but it quickly fades away when she remembers the reality of their situation. “What are we going to do about Strucker’s men?” 

He’s quiet for a long time, long enough that Wanda starts to think he didn’t hear her, before he finally says, “Keep running. That’s all we can do.” 

They drive for a little over an hour when Pietro starts vibrating in his seat, his hands blurring on the steering wheel. 

“Pietro? What’s wrong?” Wanda asks, frightened. He doesn’t answer, but pulls the wheel sharply to the right, the car veering to the side of the empty road before braking suddenly. Wanda’s thrown forward and the seat belt digs into her injured shoulder. Pietro yanks the door open and falls on the road, shaking and groaning and clutching at his chest. 

Wanda fumbles to unbuckle her seat belt, her hands sweating and slipping on the button to release it, and runs to Pietro side. She reaches out to touch her shoulders. 

_Zip._

He’s gone. Wanda whips her head around, only to spot him about several yards away, crouching on the floor. 

_Zip._

He’s disappeared completely. No matter where Wanda looks, she can’t find him. 

_Zip._

He’s in front of her again, on the ground, clawing at his hair. 

She drops to her knees in front of him. “Pietro!” she yells and grabs his face. 

“H-hurts,” he says. He moves again, lighting quick, and Wanda falls back from the force of it. When Pietro comes back several minutes later, he’s still shaking. His thin white shirt is soaked with sweat and his hair is plastered to his forehead, but he doesn’t look like he’s in pain anymore. Wanda jumps up and brings the water bottle from the car. There’s only a mouthful left, but she shoves the bottle at Pietro. When he finishes it, he tosses the empty plastic aside and collapses against the side of the car. 

“What happened?” she asks. Her hands twitch at her sides, unsure of what to do. 

“It happens sometimes," he says, "When we were in the prison, it happened at lot." Wanda's throat feels dry as she remembers his screams inside the cell. 

“But why does it happen?” She takes a step towards him, but Pietro moves away. His hands still shake fast enough that they blur. 

“We have to go.” 

“Pietro – ” 

“It’s not safe here, Wanda. We’re exposed,” he says. Wanda sighs and reluctantly gets in the car, knowing that he’s right. 

He doesn’t bring up the incident the rest of the car ride. Even though worry gnaws at Wanda’s stomach, she doesn’t say anything. Neither one of them know what’s happening to them, what Hydra has done to them. 

It takes them about two and a half hours to get to Vienna. By the time they get there, the day is in full swing. The first thing they do is abandon the car, unsure if Hydra could track it or not. Pietro puts on the jacket and tells Wanda to find a store that sell food and clothes while he runs an errand. 

“Meet me here in half an hour,” he says. 

“Be careful,” she says. She doesn't like to be away from him. Every time they’re forced to separate, Wanda gets a terrible sinking feeling that she’ll never see him again. 

She shakes her head and tries to focus. They need food and clothes. She glances down at her thin, dirty, torn dress, and shivers in the cold morning air. She walks and walks, passing by smaller stores, until she finds a large shopping center. She cautiously steps inside and looks around in awe. She and Pietro have travelled a lot, have passed through a number of large cities, but, knowing the danger, they’ve always shied away from such densely populated places. This is her chance to finally see what it’s like. 

She walks from one floor to another, taking note of all the different stores they have. There are so many of them, her head spins. There's a store that only sells sweets, and the chocolates and caramels displayed on the widow make her mouth water. Another store sells brightly-colored decorative candles. Another one sells jewelry; another, clothes for children; another, beauty supplies. 

At the far end of the building, she comes across a larger store that looks promising, but before Wanda has a chance to go inside, a tall, imposing man in a uniform approaches. He looks her up and down, his eyes lingering on her bare feet, before he tells her to leave. For a moment, Wanda’s afraid, but it’s quickly replaced by the familiar burn of anger and indignation. It swells and grows until she realizes that it’s not her anger, but the spark that’s spreading. Her hands begin to glow, and the man backs away, fear in his eyes. Wanda stares at her hands in horror before she spins around on her heels and flees, her feet slipping on the polish floors. She sprints down stairs and long aisles until she makes it past the large entrance door, all the while willing the light to fade. 

By the time she’s reached the spot where she’s supposed to meet Pietro, her sides hurt and she’s gasping for air, but her hands have returned to their normal color. 

“You’re late,” Pietro says testily. Wanda doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t listen to whatever else Pietro says. “Wanda?” She feels his hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asks, lightly shaking her shoulder. 

“I found a place, a good place, but I don’t think we can go back there,” she finally says. Pietro looks at her for a few moments before nodding. 

“We’ll find somewhere else.” 

They walk together down the streets until they find another store. It's not like the shopping center that Wanda had found, only a single store, but it’s big and they sell what she and Pietro need. 

As they walk in, Pietro leans in and whispers, “I have some money. Find what you need, but be quick. I’ll get the food and some supplies.” 

Wanda doesn't ask where he got the money, only nods shakily, and tries to look casual as she walks down the aisles. She picks the most inexpensive clothes she can find for herself: simple shoes, a pair of tights to cover her bruised legs and a plain black dress she finds hung under a large sign that boasts, "SALE: 60% OFF!" She eyes a pair of soft-looking pants longingly, but buying them and a shirt together would cost more than just the dress. 

Pietro meets her near the front of the store, his arms laden with food packages, bandages, and a set of clothes for himself. She looks at his bundle warily. 

“What?” 

“Exactly how much money do you have?” 

“Enough, I think.” 

“And where did you get this money?” She keeps her voice quiet, but Pietro still shushes her. He comes closer to her before pulling out a worn wallet. 

“I took it from a man on the street. It isn't much, but it should be enough to buy this.” 

Wanda bites her lip. She hadn't wanted to ask earlier because she knew the money was stolen, but it still leaves a sour taste in her mouth. What if it was the only money the man had? What if he needed it too feed his family? Even if he didn't need the money, even if he was the richest man on Earth, it's still not right for them to take it. 

“Stop it, Wanda. You know we need clothes and food." 

“It’s still not right. And we shouldn’t have to steal.” Before he can answer, she turns away and takes their things to the register. They man looks at them suspiciously the entire time he’s ringing up their things, and his eyes linger on the wallet that Pietro takes out of his jacket. Wanda stands on the balls of her feet the entire time, ready to spring into action if either the man or Pietro says anything. 

Mercifully, nothing happens. The man tells them how much they have to pay, and Pietro, who’s already counted the money, immediately hands over the correct amount. They both sigh in relief after they’ve left the store. Pietro, who’d looked even angrier since the incident in the highway, grins at Wanda. She smiles back, wishing her brother would smile more often. 

They find nearby public restrooms and separate to put on their new clothes. Wanda tries to clean off some of the dirt and dried blood in the small sink before changing. The clothes, inexpensive as they were, still feel like smooth and silky against her skin, a stark contrast to the rough clothes they’d been given in the prison. She slips on her shoes, wincing as they rub against the cuts and blisters on her feet. 

She’s admiring herself in the mirror above the sink when she hears Pietro yelling angrily outside. Her entire body goes cold and panic seizes her chest. They’ve been found. She throws the bag with their things over her shoulder and runs outside, bracing herself to face dozens of Hydra agents. 

When she opens the door, she only sees Pietro, his body coiled, ready to attack, and another man making placating gestures toward him. 

“Wanda, run!” Pietro yells when he sees her. The other man flinches toward her and Pietro takes the opportunity to lunge forward and tackle the man to the ground. He throws Pietro off expertly and yells something in English. Wanda only catches the word ‘help.’ It makes her pause. What if the man is asking for help? Before she can say anything, Pietro’s punches the man in the face. 

“Aww, nose,” the man says as he goes down again, his words muffled by his hands. 

“Let’s go,” Pietro says. He takes the bag from Wanda and they both run away. She doesn’t ask why he doesn’t try running fast. She knows it’s because of what happened earlier. 

Fear works its way up her throat. They’ve been found. Again. How much further can they run before they’re taken back to Munich, to Strucker and his men? She glances behind her to see the man stagger to his feet, his hands clutching his nose. He chases after them, yelling in English. 

“Pietro, he’s coming,” she gasps, her heart thudding in her chest. 

“Fuck. Okay,” he says before stopping and pulling Wanda into his arms. He pauses and shifts her around, his face hesitant. 

“It’s going to be alright, Pietro,” she says, hoping she sounds more reassuring and confident than she feels. It must be enough, though, because Pietro takes a deep breath and runs. 

The wind rushes in her ears and she has to clench her eyes shut against the swirl of colors, but she feels light and free. She hears Pietro’s laughter and joins in. Maybe they’ll be able to outrun Hydra after all. 


	3. Chapter 3

It takes Pietro twenty minutes to reach Budapest, only a fraction of the time it would take someone travelling by car. He's gotten faster and grown more comfortable with his speed since Vienna. When he finally skids to a stop, he only looks slightly winded. 

Once the dizziness has passed, Wanda slips out of his arms and lands on shaky legs. As she steadies herself against a nearby wall, she studies her brother carefully. His face is as serious as it has been since they escaped, but there’s a lightness in his stance and his eyes reflect solemn satisfaction at being able to get them away from the Hydra agent that found them. 

Wanda's eyes are drawn to his hair again. The white has spread. It was only a few stray streaks before, but now it grows in uneven patches across his head. A thick white lock falls over his right eye, and she brushes it aside before he can notice. 

“We were here once,” Pietro says, his voice startling Wanda. “Maybe three years ago. I don’t remember where we were going, but we stopped here for a couple days. Remember?” 

“Yes. You wanted to stay in villages, but I begged you to bring me here. I wanted to see the buildings. It’s one of the last cities we stopped in before…before they took us.” 

They fall silent. The heaviness of the past hangs over them, and for one long minute, they both stand facing each other, their arms loose at their sides, remembering the long years they have spent running. 

“Let’s go, before they find us,” Pietro says after a while. The atmosphere is strange around them. They both glance over their shoulders and around corners, afraid of being spotted by Hydra agents, but the air is crisp and clean, and the sun shines brightly over their heads. A bird chirps merrily on a nearby lamppost, and Pietro mutters darkly under his breath, glaring at it for intruding on their somber mood. 

As they walk down the street, a group of schoolchildren pass by them, laughing and shouting and shoving each other. A frazzled-looking woman in a yellow dress walks behind them, herding them along and yelling for them to stay together. One of the children, a small boy carrying a bright green backpack, stops in front of Pietro, his head tilted to one side and his nose scrunched in curiosity. 

His face breaks into a wide grin that reveals two missing teeth.“You look just like my grandpa! His hair is white, too," he cries, pointing to Pietro. Pietro hunches his shoulders and moves to walk around the boy. 

“Stop it, Maté,” the teacher scolds. The boy just grins and waves goodbye to Pietro. Pietro stays tense, his fists clenched at his sides, until the group disappears down the street. 

“Pietro?” Wanda asks. 

“Come on. We shouldn't draw attention to ourselves,” he says, his voice low and tight. They walk down long, winding streets, following groups of people until they reach a particularly crowded area. People rush by in a flurry of noise and confusion. Wanda’s head start to spin from the chaos and her breathing quickens until Pietro pulls her behind a large map of local bus routes. 

“We need money,” he says, “I had some left over from the store in Vienna, but it’s no good here. There are places where we can exchange euros to forints, but I don't want to draw attention to ourselves by asking for directions. We still have some food and supplies left over, but they won’t last long. Now, I have a plan – ” 

“No. We’re not stealing again. I won’t.” 

“But Wanda – ” 

“No,” she says firmly, “We’ve stolen enough already. It’s not right, Pietro. We’ve done alright in the past without having to steal. Remember, you worked at the – ” 

“It took me months to find that job. Everywhere I went, they turned me away. We don’t have time for that now,” Pietro says. She reads the bitterness in the angry pull of his mouth, the hardness of his eyes, the lines on his forehead. “It’s not fair. All our lives, we’ve been treated like we’re less than everyone else, like we don't belong anywhere. We shouldn’t have to steal, and we shouldn’t have to beg for work, but we also shouldn't have been taken away and prodded at or experimented on. I shouldn’t be able to run faster than a car, and you shouldn’t do whatever it is that you do.” He leans down and puts his hands on her shoulders. “Our lives have not been easy, Wanda, but I promised you long ago that I would keep you safe, and if that means that I have to steal, then that's what I'll do, even if you don't want to." He breaks off, and his eyes blaze stubborn and hurt before he deflates. "You can stay here if you want. I'll find the money and come back." 

Wanda reaches out and tangles her hand in his shirt. "No," she says, "I'm coming with you." It's wrong, but what else can they do? Hope that someone happens to come along and give them money or food or somewhere to sleep. 

Pietro gives her a tight smile, but she can only nod weakly and tries to pay attention as he explains his plan. She follows him down the stairs to the subway station when he’s finished. Everything he said was true. Their lives haven’t been fair, and after spending years in captivity, there isn’t much they can do except try to survive. Without help from anyone, they don’t have many more options. But it still leaves a sick feeling in Wanda’s throat. She’ll help Pietro this time, but it’ll be the only time. She won’t do it again. 

“Are you ready?” Pietro asks. He’s put on the jacket, but left it unbuttoned, his hands hidden in the pockets. “Wanda?” he prompts when she doesn’t answer. 

“Yes,” she says, surprising herself. Pietro squeezes her hand and moves away from her. He stands on the far end of the platform and pretends to be impatiently waiting for the next train. It doesn't require very much acting on his part. He’s always been impatient. 

Wanda leans against a pillar, and tries to look casual. She can’t keep her eyes from darting at her surroundings. Every person on the platform looks suspicious. The man typing away on his phone might by a Hydra agent. The woman with the earphones might a police officer. The tall man in the corner might be Strucker himself in disguise. Wanda rubs her hands on her arms to stop herself from shivering, and tries to calm down. She’s not doing herself or Pietro any favors by looking so out of place. 

Before she has any more time to change her mind, a train arrives at the station. The doors open and people spill out. There are so many of them, that Wanda, even as she’s trying to push through, gets caught up in the chaos. She gets turned around, shoved, pushed, until she finally hits the ground, the hard floor tearing a hole in her new tights. 

“Are you alright, miss?” a soft voice asks. A man in a fine-looking suit holds his hand out to her. She hesitates before taking it. When he pulls her to her feet, he looks right at her face, but he doesn’t flinch away or look at her with the disdain she's come to expect. “Are you hurt?” he asks. 

“No, no, I’m fine. Thank you,” she says. Her voice is weak and she feels nauseous. Her Hungarian is much thinner than her German. She hopes it’s enough. His answering smile is kind and understated, but it only makes Wanda feel worse. “My name is – ” 

“Excuse me,” Pietro says as he bumps roughly into the man. 

A flash of annoyance passes over the man’s face, but it quickly vanishes. “No problem,” he says over his shoulder. 

He turns back to Wanda with a smile, but she interrupts him before he can say anything. “I have to go. Thank you for your help,” she says. She keeps her head down and tries to walk at a normal pace, suppressing the urge to run as fast and as far away as possible. She meets Pietro several blocks away. When he sees her, he pulls the man’s wallet out of the jacket to show her before quickly hiding it again. 

“You didn’t have to hit him that hard, you know,” Wanda says. 

“Serves the bastard right. Did you see the way he was looking at you?” 

“He was very polite,” she says through gritted teeth. She understands why Pietro is protective of her, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. 

“Whatever. I counted the money while I was waiting for you. We have enough to pay for a room for tonight. The food we bought at the store earlier will only last a couple days, but we can use whatever money is left over after we pay for the room to buy more. We’re lucky that that man carries a fat wallet.” 

Wanda considers objecting. Renting a room, even in the cheapest hotel, would cost too much money, money that they need for food and supplies, money that they _stole_. She wants to say that it’s a bad idea, that they should just save the money for food, but the adrenaline has dissolved and the weariness that’s settled in her bones is almost enough to knock her off her feet. 

“Come on, Wanda. When was the last time we slept in a real bed?” Pietro says as he wraps an encouraging arm around her. She imagines laying her head on a pillow and tangling her legs in a blanket. It’s enough to alleviate some of the guilt she feels. 

They walk together with their heads bent close, trading whispers about how long they can stay in Budapest before Hydra and Strucker find them. When they get to a street lined with some of the most beautiful buildings Wanda has ever seen, she pulls away from Pietro, and let’s her eyes drift over them. A tall building with elegant, intricate carvings draws Wanda’s attention. 

“We don’t have time for this,” Pietro says, impatient as always. 

“One second,” she says, raising her hand to run her fingers over the carvings. She feels the grainy texture under her hand, and her eyes follow the elaborate designs that the lines form. A sense of peace works its way into her chest, and the spark begins to glow warmly. Wanda is surprised and afraid for a moment, but the energy pulses in time with her heart and an easy connection, an understanding, begins to form. She watches calmly as her hand begins to glow, white in the center, pink around it, and red along the edges. 

“What are you doing?” Pietro asks. He doesn’t hesitate for a second before touching her glowing hand and pulling it away from the building. Wanda looks down at their twined hands, his pale and calloused, hers pulsing with light. The trust he has in her, the firm belief that she won't hurt him, only serves to make the warmth in her chest grow. “Someone will see,” he warns. Wanda nods reluctantly, and her hand returns to its normal color. 

She smiles at Pietro, ready to tell him about the spark and how right it had felt, how she wasn’t terrified of it for once, when a loud noise cracks through the air. There are terrified screams followed closely by three more loud bangs. Pietro pulls Wanda away from the sidewalk and into the building’s arched doorway. He maneuvers them so that his body is covering hers. 

“Gunshots?” she asks. The noise sounded frighteningly similar to when the Hydra agents were shooting at them, but she wasn’t sure. 

“I think so,” he says. “We can’t stay here. They might have found us.” He moves to pick her up. 

“No, no, wait! Didn’t you hear all those people screaming? They could be hurt.” 

Pietro pauses, his hands freezing in mid-air. “It isn’t our problem,” he finally says. 

“But – ” 

“No,” he says. The stubborn set of his shoulders doesn’t dissuade Wanda. She moves around him and runs closer to the other building, ignoring his shouts. A large group of people crowds the area around the building, while a man in a security guard uniform shouts frantically into his radio as he paces back and forth, his eyes darting from the crowd to the building and back. 

Wanda approaches the nearest person, a woman in a dark pantsuit who stares at the building with wide, frightened eyes. “What happened?” she asks. 

The woman doesn’t take her eyes off the building as she answers, “Bank robbery. There are people inside. I-I work here. I was supposed to come in at nine, but my son's school called..." She trails off, and her arms fall limp to her sides. "I would have been inside.” 

Wanda isn’t sure how to comfort the woman, but she settles for lightly squeezing her shoulder. 

“It’s going to be alright,” she says in her best Hungarian. She leaves the woman and moves closer to the building. 

Pietro jogs over to her at normal speed.“No,” he says, “I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no. Whatever is going on here does not involve us.” 

“There’s a bank robbery, and there are people inside. Innocent people, Pietro,” she says, giving him a meaningful look. 

“It isn’t our business.” 

“But we can help them.” 

“No one helped us,” Pietro says, his voice angry and loud. Several people turn startled looks at them. “We were innocent, too, Wanda, and no one cared,” he says more quietly. “Why should we help anyone?” 

“Because it’s the right thing to do. You don’t have to come with me, Pietro, but I can’t just walk away.” She moves to stand just to the side of building’s large doors, and takes a steadying breath before peeking in through the glass. 

“Miss, you can’t go in there,” the security guards protests. 

“Fuck off,” Pietro tells the man, as he arrives at Wanda’s side. 

“Have the police been called?” Wanda asks the frightened guard. 

“Y-yes. They should be here soon, but you really shouldn’t go in there. People might get hurt.” 

“People might already be hurt. We can’t afford to waste any more time or wait for the police.” Wanda exhales slowly and lets the spark start to grow again. She's tries not to force it, to just let it happen. It takes longer than she'd like, but the energy finally makes it way outward and her hands glow red. 

“Are you sure about this?” Pietro asks. 

“Yes,” she says. Pietro nods stiffly and opens the doors. 

Gunshots go off as soon as the doors open and panicked shouts fill the air. Pietro moves them both out of the way as Wanda raises her glowing hands and lets a wave of pinkish-red light pass through the room. The guns misfire the second time the robbers try to shoot at them, and Pietro runs to each of the men, disarming them and knocking them to the floor in seconds. Wanda rushes to a man sitting against a wall, clutching a bloody shoulder. 

“It’s okay. We’re going to get you out of here, and everything’s going to be fine,” she says. The man’s skin is sweaty and his face is pale. He frowns at her through unfocused eyes, but Wanda ignores it. She presses her hands to the wound to try to slow down the bleeding. 

There’s a quiet squeak behind her, and she turns around quickly. A man carrying a large gun is moving towards her. Wanda throws her hands up and aims the red light at him. Instead of a wave, though, it’s smaller and more dense. The man is thrown back violently from the force of it, his gun clattering to the floor without going off. 

“Just hold on,” she tells the injured man when she turns back to him. Pietro appears next to her in a gust of wind. 

“Are you alright?” he asks her, his eyes checking her over for injuries. 

“I’m fine. Do you think that was everyone?” 

“I don’t know. Start getting people out. I’ll check to see if there are any more of them left.” He speeds away before she can say anything. People are already on their feet and running toward the exits. 

“Can someone please help me?” Wanda asks as she tries to lift the hurt man to his feet without jostling his shoulder too much. An ashen, trembling woman stops next to them, and puts her arms around the man’s waist. Together, they pull him to his feet and walk slowly toward the exit. Wanda hands him to the guard, and runs back inside the building. 

“Pietro?” Less than two seconds go by before he appears in front of her. 

“There were two more in the vault, but I took care of them.” 

“Okay, good. Everyone’s out. One man was hurt, but I think he’s getting help now.” 

“Fine. Let’s go before the police arrive and start asking questions. We’ve made enough of a spectacle already.” 

They try to sneak out without anyone noticing them, but the moment they walk outside, the roar of the crowd quiets. The security guard is trying to bandage the injured man’s shoulder, but he smiles awkwardly at them and nods. 

Everything is still and quiet for a second, until someone in the crowd yells at them. It’s like a spark that sets off one person after another. Wanda can’t understand much of what they say, but the anger in their voices is unmistakable in any language. Only the guard and a handful of others look grateful. Everything else is a jumble of hateful words that both frighten and hurt Wanda. It reminds her so much of the day her parents died. 

The police finally arrive, but when they get out of their cars, people in the crowd run to them and point to Wanda and Pietro. She hears someone say the word _witch_. Wanda doesn’t know what else they say, but the officers start to move towards them, cautious look on their faces. 

There’s sudden movement, and the world disappears in a blur. Her head falls against Pietro's chest and she focuses on his heartbeat and steady breaths Everything else falls away while he runs. When Pietro stops, he puts her down gently. She keeps her eyes closed even as she stands, and bites her lip to keep the tears back. Pietro sighs, kisses her forehead, and wraps his arms around her. 

“I knew this would happen,” he says. It only makes her feel worse until he adds quietly, “I’m sorry.” She pulls away from him and rubs at her eyes. She feels Pietro tense. “First they hate us because we are Romani. Now they hate us for what we can do, for saving them.” 

“They’re afraid,” she says in a choked voice. 

Pietro snorts. “Afraid or not, I'm never going to get involved in anything like that again. Ungrateful assholes. Come on, we should go in case the police come looking for us, too.” 

Wanda swallows and nods weakly. She hadn’t thought about what might happen when she and Pietro used their abilities in front of others. Her only concern was that people were in danger, that someone might be injured. She had remembered what it was like when she and Pietro were imprisoned, how much pain they had been in, and she couldn’t stomach the idea of anyone else being hurt. The man who had been shot had lost a lot of blood - there had been a small puddle of it surrounding him on the floor - but she had gotten him out in time. The woman who helped her had been frightened just like everyone else, her frail shoulder trembling in her shawl. She must have seen what Wanda had done, but she still stopped to help them. A few of the faces in the crowd had even smiled at her. 

Some of the tightness in her chest unfurls. Even though most of the people had reacted badly, Wanda hadn’t helped them because she expected gratitude. She ran into a building full of armed men because she wanted to help. And she did help. Regardless of how most of the people reacted, she and Pietro had stopped the bank robbers and had saved lives. The torture, the procedures, the pain that she had endured for two years had resulted in her new abilities. Those abilities, that _spark_ terrifies her. She’s seen how destructive that power can be, how much damage it can inflict, and she's been trying to control it since she escaped. 

But now she had used it to save people. That warmth that she had felt when she was looking at the building had made her feel different, almost connected to the world around her. It hadn't felt like something that she had to bury inside of her or suppress. Since they manifested, Wanda has been horrified at herself, at the chaos she causes, but as frightened as she is, those abilities are a part of her now. And maybe she can use them to make things better, not just for her and her brother, but for other people as well. 

People have been cruel to her, her family, her people her whole life, but that doesn't mean she should let that fester inside of her or harden her heart. 

“You’re thinking very loudly,” Pietro says. Wanda is so startled that she jumps away from him, clutching at her chest. “Are you alright?” he asks. 

“Yes. You just surprised me, that’s all,” she says. He stops walking, and looks down at her with concern. 

“No, I mean, are you alright after what happened back there?” 

“Oh. Yes, yes, I’m fine.” At Pietro’s incredulous look, she adds, “What happened hurt, and I was frightened, I _am_ frightened, but we did the right thing and I don’t regret it.” 

Pietro is silent for a long time. Eventually, he takes her hand, and they walk down the streets together. They haven’t heard any sirens and no one’s stopped them, but they’re still careful. They make several unexpected turns and double back every once in a while. After about an hour of walking, they stop at a small hotel just outside the city. It’s rundown and from the mostly empty parking lot, it doesn’t look like there are very many guests, but that’s exactly what Wanda and Pietro hoped for. 

In the lobby, they sit on uncomfortable plastic chairs until a woman emerges from the back room to check them in. She spends a long time staring at Wanda’s face and Pietro’s hair. 

“I’m sorry, but we don’t – ” Wanda and Pietro simultaneously tense – “Take credit cards. You’ll have to pay cash.” 

“Yes, yes. That’s fine,” Wanda says, taking the wallet from Pietro’s pocket and handing over the money. They leave before the woman can say anything else. They’ve been turned away from many places before, and after what happened at the bank, Wanda doesn’t know how Pietro would have reacted. 

All of that is forgotten when they get to their room. Tears, actual tears, well in Wanda’s eyes at the sight of the two small beds. She lets the bag that she carried all day drop to the floor before she runs to the nearest bed and flops down on it. She buries her face in the pillow and screams joyously into it. Pietro laughs and jumps onto the other bed with a childish glee that Wanda was sure was gone forever. Exhausted from the long days, Wanda only manages another laugh before she tugs the blanket over her legs and falls asleep. 

It’s dark by the time she wakes up. Pietro’s snoring on the other side of the small room, so Wanda toes off her shoes and walks as quietly as possible to the bathroom. She locks the door behind her, and looks at herself in the mirror above the sink. In spite of how pale and haggard her face looks, she smiles at herself. It’s hard to be upset after having slept several blissful, dreamless hours in a bed. 

Her eyes drift close and takes a deep breath, willing herself to relax as much as possible. It isn’t long before the spark starts blooming and spreading through her. She opens her eyes, half-expecting to see her entire body glowing, but her reflection is normal. It’s only when the warmth reaches her hands that there’s any physical sign that something’s happening. Wanda holds one shining palm up, and tries to coax the energy into a tangible shape. Her breathing becomes labored from the effort, and her head starts to spin. She shakes her hands out, and splashes her face with water. 

She lets her mind drift back to that moment outside the building, when she was admiring its beauty, and the spark inside of her had burned so effortlessly. She holds her palm up and lets the energy flow through her. A tiny pinprick of red light hovers above her hand. It slowly grows in size, it’s color lightening as it gets bigger, until it fills her palm. She closes her hand, and the sphere disappears. She opens her other hand, and another sphere appears. She repeats this several times. 

Wanda laughs quietly, trying not to wake up her brother. If she can learn to use her abilities, maybe she and Pietro can not only escape from Hydra, but find a way to stop them from hurting anyone ever again. 

“Wanda?” Pietro asks, as he knocks on the door. 

She opens the door with a bright grin stretched across her face. “Sorry, did I wake you?” 

“No, but do you mind?” he asks as he gestures inside the bathroom. 

“Oh, sorry. Go ahead. But hurry, I have to talk to you.” Pietro groans and kicks the door closed behind him. 

When he comes out of the bathroom, Wanda is sitting calmly on her bed. “I have something to show you,” she says. 

“It’s the middle of the night. Can’t it wait until morning?” he says as he yawns. 

“No, it’s important. Look.” She holds her palm up, a bright sphere of energy shining over it. “I can focus it now.” 

“That – that’s great, Wanda. It’ll come in handy if, or _when_ , Hydra finds us. We’re lucky we’ve gone this long with them tracking us down, but it probably won’t last long. We’ll just have to run again when they find us.” 

Wanda tries to keep the exciting out of her voice when she says, “I don’t think we should run. I think we should fight them, stop them for good. That way, we won’t have to keep running, and they won’t take anyone else - ” 

Pietro interrupts her. “Absolutely not. Taking down those bank robbers was a mistake, a dangerous mistake, but trying to stop Strucker and Hydra is madness. Or have you forgotten how many of them there are or how dangerous they can be?” 

“Have you forgotten how many people died at their hands?” she asks, her words making Pietro’s eyes widen. “We weren’t the only ones taken. We’re the only ones that survived. I don’t know why did this to us, but I think we can use our abilities against them. We can finally be free.. We’ve been running for years, long before Hydra, and tired of it. I don’t want to spend the rest of our lives running.” 

“I don’t either, Wanda," he says, his voice quiet and the anger gone from his eyes. "I thought we might go to America. I don’t think they’ll mind us too much there. They have a lot of strange people. They even have that man who is made of iron on television.” 

“But we can go to America after we stop Hydra,” Wanda says. “I couldn’t live with myself if someone else was taken.” 

“No. It’s too dangerous, and I can’t let anything else happen to you,” Pietro argues. “I already told you that I’m not going to get involved with this saving people nonsense. And neither are you.” 

“I can make my own decisions, Pietro, and this is what I’m deciding.” 

Pietro doesn’t say anything. He just shakes his head sharply, and leaves the room. She hears him muttering angrily and pacing outside. He’s right about some things. What she’s proposing is dangerous, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the only real option they have. They can’t keep running. They’re bound to be caught that way. If they stop Hydra, then maybe they can stop running and go to America, like Pietro said, and make a life there. She just has to convince him of that. 

She’s about to go to him when she hears him shout, “What the hell are you doing? Let me go!” 

She runs to the door and presses her ear against it. “Where’s your sister?” a voice asks. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t have sister,” Pietro says. Wanda jumps across the bed and has their bag in her hand when a Hydra agent runs into the room. 

“Don't move,” he says, pointing a gun at her. 

Wanda’s had enough of guns for one day, for an entire lifetime. She exhales slowly, and curls her fingers. The bright orb hangs in the air for a second before Wanda flings it across the room. The Hydra agent is knocked down, and Wanda jumps right over him and runs out of the room. She see several more agents lying unconscious on the floor. 

Pietro’s pained shout drags her attention away from them. He’s down at the end of the hallway, struggling violently against three men.

Wanda starts to chase after him. She opens her mouth to scream his name, but a calloused hand closes itself around her mouth, and she’s pulled back into the dark and away from Pietro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pietro's line, "They even have that man who is made of iron on television" is based on a similar line from Avengers Origins: Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! These past couple weeks have been a nightmare. I'd like to thank everyone that's read, commented, and left kudos. It means a lot to me, so thank you!!

Wanda’s entire world slows down. She hears every one of her heartbeats thundering in her ears; She feels every blister and cut on her feet as they scrape against the rough floor with every one of her desperate kicks; She hears Pietro's ragged scream out again and again, and it's so familiar that it's almost like she's back in her cell, listening to her brother's pain, unable to do anything to help. 

Calloused fingers dig into her mouth, and a hand wraps itself around her waist, pulling her into a corner. A voice speaks low and fast in English, the hot breath in her ear making her skin crawl. Her arms flail back until her hands grab onto sweaty strands of short hair. After a second, the haze fades away and snaps back into the moment. _Pietro is being taken away_. He’s going to be thrown back into a dark cell. They’re going to be separated again, maybe for good this time. She can’t let that happen. She bites down hard on the hand, hard enough that she tastes blood, and digs her elbow into the Hydra agent’s stomach. 

“Ah, fuck!” a rough voice yelps. 

Wanda doesn’t spare the man a glance. As soon as his hold on her slackens, she tears herself away from him and sprints down the hallway, desperately following the sounds of Pietro’s cries. 

More Hydra agents emerge from the rooms that line the corridor, some of them waving guns in her face, others reaching out with their spidery arms to pull her in. She sees a tiny flash of red in her corner of her eye and instinctively throws herself to the floor. There’s a loud _crack_ as a bullet lodges itself into the wall behind Wanda. 

It was meant for her. She would be dead, and there would be no one left to save her brother. 

Wanda slaps her hands on the ground, pushes herself up, and stalks toward the hoard of agents, her entire body vibrating with energy. The once warm spark burns furiously through her, and the air shifts around her. She raises her glowing hands. They’re so tense that her middle and ring fingers curl inward toward her palms. The energy thrums louder at her strange gesture, and twin pinkish-red orbs fly forward and knock the man who had shot at her to the ground, his gun clattering away in the opposite direction. 

“Get the witch,” one of the masked men yells. 

At his command, dozens of masked men move towards her. Wanda’s lips curl in frustration. She doesn’t have time for this. Every second she wastes, Pietro is taken further and further away. She shakes her stiff hands out once, throws them up again, and coaxes a wave of red light to move through the long, open corridor. The men shout and scream as the light hits them, their guns falling to the floor. 

She doesn’t check to see if the men have also fallen down, and instead spins on her heels and tears after Pietro’s increasingly faint voice. A sudden sharp, burning sensation in her left arm makes her stumble. Her ankle rolls painfully as she runs down the staircase, and has to hold onto the railing to keep herself from falling down. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she pushes forward and follows after Pietro. When she turns the corner, Pietro’s voice suddenly cuts off. She can still hears the men’s footsteps and their hurried breathing, but Pietro has gone silent. Cold, paralyzing fear floods down from her body, and she slumps against a wall. 

He can’t be dead. Strucker said they couldn’t kill him, that they needed them both too much for them to die. 

Pietro can't be dead. He can't. 

Wanda pushes herself off the wall, and forces herself onward. 

A strangled voice calls out to her in English, but she ignores it in favor of limping as fast as she can towards the echoing footsteps. The hotel is a small, open building, three stories high with the rooms structured around an open courtyard in the middle of it. Wanda and Pietro had been given a room on the third floor. 

She hears voices below her, and leans over the second floor railing. On ground floor, on the other side of the courtyard, four Hydra agents carry an unconscious Pietro, each one of them holding a limb. Three more agents surround them, bulky weapons held up and pointed at their surroundings. Pietro’s head is lolled back, and even from the distance, Wanda sees blood staining the white in his hair red. 

She moves to pull herself over the railing so that she can jump down, when a hand latches itself onto her arm and roughly pulls her back. 

“Are you out of your mind?” It’s a man, the same man that had found her and Pietro in Vienna. She hears his words, but doesn’t understand what they mean. Desperation and fear grab her throat in a vice and she can’t breathe. She snaps her palm up and tries to make the spark burn again, to conjure up another glowing red sphere, but it only flickers for a second before fading away. 

She yells in frustration and starts to hit the man, slapping him and punching his chest, his cheeks, his mouth. Her shoulders shake. She can’t see through the tears. 

“Aww, fuck - stop. What are you – wait - no,” he says. His hands come up to loosely cover his face. 

The tears stream down her face, and the pain from losing Pietro mixes with the burning pain in her left arm. Frustrated, she draws her fist back to hit the man again. 

“Not the nose!” he screams, slapping his hands over it. He talks quickly in English, but it’s beyond what Wanda can understand. Amidst the blur of strange words, she hears brother. Brother – that word she understands. 

“ Pietro,” she says, her face hardening. She kicks the man hard. Her stocking-clad toes protest at the action, but it's worth it when the man goes down with a pained _oomph_. 

She leans over the railing again, her eyes her eyes frantically scanning the area for Pietro, but he and Strucker’s men are long gone by now. If she can run fast enough, though, maybe she’ll see where they take him. They must have come in a car. She can follow it and – 

“ ‘s too many of them. We can’t go after them right now. It would only get you captured,” the man says as he staggers to his feet. 

Wanda spins around, her face clouded with frustration. “No English,” she says through gritted teeth. 

The man winces and scratches the back of his head. “Uh…German? You speak German?” he asks her, his accent stilted and awkward. 

Wanda makes a vague gesture with her hands. She has no interest in what the strange man has to say. Not now, at least. She takes a few halting steps, but the man calls her back. 

“No, no wait,” he says in German, “There are too many of them, and you’re hurt.” Wanda’s brow furrows. He gestures at her left arm, the one that burns. She looks down to see blood sluggishly spilling down it. 

She frowns at the wound and slowly says, “I don’t – ” 

“When you did that freaky light show back there, one of the men managed to land a shot,” he says. “Look, I know you want to go after your brother. I get it. But you’ll only get yourself caught if you go alone. We can rescue him, but you’ve got to let me help you, okay?” 

“Why?” 

“Why what?” 

“You are Hydra. You tried to take us in Vienna. Why would you help?” He’s lying. She knows he’s lying, but she’s dizzy and tired and she has no idea how to find Pietro. 

"Wha - I’m not Hydra! Why would you think that? I’ve been trying to help you guys all this time. Remember Vienna? I was trying to tell your brother that Hydra was laying a trap for you guys - this was it, by the way – and that I was sent to get you guys out, but your brother freaked out and _broke my nose_.” 

Wanda shakes her head at him, and starts to move away, but he makes a placating gesture with his hands. 

“Look, I don’t mean to rush you or anything, but those Hydra agents you knocked out are going to wake up soon, and they’ll come after us. We’ve gotta move. I think I might have an know where they’re taking your brother. I’ll help you get him back. After that, you guys can take off alone. I won’t bother you anymore. Alright?” 

She doesn’t trust him. She can’t. But the blood loss and the weariness is starting to make her sway. 

“Okay,” she finally says. 

“Awesome,” he says in English before adding in German, “My name’s Clint, by the way. Clint Barton.” 

“Wanda Maximoff,” she says, taking his outstretched hand and shaking it lightly. 

“Nice to meet you Wanda. Now, come on, let’s go save your brother.” 

-

Getting out of the hotel takes longer than either of them would have liked. Clint tries to help Wanda, but she flinches away from him when he reaches his hand out. He up holds his palms and steps back, letting her stagger down the stairs by herself. By the time they make it to the ground floor, the Hydra agents have recuperated, and they efficiently spread out around Wanda and Clint, boxing them in so that they can’t leave. 

“Stay behind me,” Clint tells Wanda quietly. She wants to protest, but the dizziness and pain have rendered her speechless. She does move behind him, but she stands back to back with him, her uninjured arm raised in defense. She doesn’t know if her powers will work, but the threat is at least enough to intimidate the Hydra agents. 

“Give us the girl,” one of the men snarls at Clint. 

“No can do, guys.” 

There’s a tense moment where no one moves. For a moment, Wanda's confused. She and Clint are outnumbered. The Hydra agents could easily take them. 

The men shift and even through their heavy masks, Wanda can see their nervousness. They're afraid of her, she realizes, afraid of what she can do. 

Blinking sweat out of her eyes, Wanda takes a step forward, and slowly raises her other arm – the bloody, burning one – and waves her hands around. She speaks a few lines in Transian with as much energy as she can muster, and concentrates hard enough that a few stray red sparks burst out of her hands. The Hydra agents fidget and glance at each other with even greater fear. Some of them even take a few steps back, muttering about witches and hexes and magic. 

“Duck!” Clint yells, and even though Wanda is unfamiliar with the English word, she drops to the floor. There’s are a few moments were everything goes dark and quiet around her. When she opens her eyes, she finds that her head is resting on her arms on the floor. Clint crouches down next to her, a bow in his hands. 

“What - ” she starts to say, but he cuts her off. 

“You alright? Can you walk?” he asks her. Wanda’s eyes widen as two men bear down on them, but before she can warn Clint, he turns around and fires two arrows in quick succession. The men groan and fall over, arrows sticking out of their chests. Bile rises in Wanda’s throat and she only just turns her head in time before she throws up. 

When she’s done, an arm wraps itself around her waist and pulls her up. Clint has his bow strapped to his back and holds a large knife in his hand as he half-carries her outside. 

Once they get to his car and he’s helped her get in, she lets her head rest against the cool window and tries to take deep, calming breaths. She’s only vaguely aware of Clint starting the car and driving off. She tries to imagine Pietro’s face when she tells him that she got into a car with a strange man who may or may not be Hydra. 

Pietro. 

She bites her lip to keep the sob from clawing its way out of her throat. It must not work very well because she sees Clint turn to look at her out of the corner of her eye. 

“I put a tracer on your brother when we fought in Vienna. Even if Hydra does find it, I’ve been following them long enough that I know how to find them.” His voice continues to talk but the words blur in Wanda’s ears. She falls asleep before he can finish explaining where they’re going. 

When she wakes up, the door on her side is open and Clint is standing next to her, shaking her shoulder lightly. She stumbles out of the car and follows him inside a large warehouse. It’s empty, dark, and cold inside, and if she weren’t in so much pain, she’d turn right back around and stay in the car. 

“Here,” Clint says, gesturing toward a nearby table. She lurches forward and sits down on top of it. “I’ve gotta take care of your arm, okay?” 

She eyes him warily, but eventually relents. Her arm hurts too much to leave alone. 

The sting of the alcohol makes her eyes water, but she feels better once he’s wrapped her arm with bandages. He hands her two white pills and a bottle of water. 

“You’re lucky,” he says, “The bullet only grazed your arm. Could have been a lot worse.” 

She swallows the pills roughly, almost choking on them, and nods. “My brother – ” 

“Yeah," Clint sighs, "I checked the tracer’s signal, but it’s gone dark. It’s alright, though. Hydra keeps bases and safe houses all over Europe. We know the location of at least three in the area. I’ll – ” 

“We?” she interrupts. 

“S.H.I.E.L.D., the organization I work for.” 

“Shield, like a – ” She holds her uninjured arm across her chest. 

“Uh, sort of. It stands for Strategic Homeland something, something. I forget. The point is, we’re the good guys. At least most of the time. S.H.I.E.L.D. received intel that Baron von Strucker and Hydra were experimenting on people in Europe. I was sent to investigate. I found the base in Munich, took all the info I could get my hands on, and reported back to my superiors. My orders were to get you guys out.” 

“What happened? Why would they only send one man?” 

“They didn’t. I had a partner and a handler. We were supposed to wait for backup, but no one came. And then - ” Clint cuts himself off and looks away. A shadow passes over his face. "One night, I met with my handler, and she tried to kill me. My partner found me a couple hours later, pulled a gun on me. I don't - " Clint pauses. "I’ve been calling everyone. Some old partners, contacts, friends, even the fucking director, but no one’s picking up.” 

He's quiet for a long time. His head is bowed. His hands grip the pack of bandages tightly. 

“I don’t know what’s happened,” he says quietly, “But it must be bad.” 

“Why don’t you go back to America?” 

“I can’t,” he says. “I couldn’t just leave you and your brother alone. I saw what they did to you. I saw the…the scepter they used,” he trails off. He breathes slowly, deeply, and adds, “It was used on me. Not by Hydra, by someone else. A couple years ago, someone used it on me and it was…it was bad. My head got all scrambled up. I did…a lot of things, bad things. Almost no one trusted me after that. Director even benched me. This was my first big assignment since then, since New York. I was supposed to get you and your brother out and bring you to the States.” 

“Why?” 

Clint's quiet long enough that Wanda starts to feel uncomfortable. “For your own good," he finally says, looking at her with caution. "Those abilities you and your brother have are dangerous.” 

Wanda pauses for a moment. She looks closely at Clint’s face as she asks, “What if we didn’t want to go with you? Would you have forced us to come with you?” 

Clint’s eye twitches, and he exhales slowly. “Maybe,” he says. He doesn’t have to say anymore, she understands what he couldn’t say. S.H.I.E.L.D. would have forced them to go to America regardless of whether she and Pietro wanted to or not. 

Wanda’s shoulders drop and she nods wearily. “Okay,” she says, “Tell me how we’re saving me brother.” 

Clint sighs and pushes himself to his feet. “I’m going to go check the known bases, and find out where they’re keeping him. You stay here, get some food and sleep. When I come back, I’ll go over the plan,” he says as he pulls out his bow and straps a quiver of arrows to his back. 

She stares at his arrows through narrowed eyes, and asks, “Did you shoot at us in the empty lot in Munich?” 

“Yeah, that was me, but I wasn’t shooting at you. I was just trying to distract Hydra long enough to get you out.” he says. “I’ll be back soon.” 

After Clint leaves, Wanda almost wishes she’d gone with him. Even Hydra agents can’t be as bad as being left alone with her thoughts, with Pietro’s screams echoing in her head again and again. 

She runs her hands through her long hair, her hands catching on the matted curls, and tries to calm herself. Her powers are unpredictable, but they seem to work better when she isn’t terrified and trying to force them. She closes her eyes and pictures Pietro’s face, his easy smile when he teases her, the way his usually arrogant, hard eyes soften when he looks at her, the black curls that are – were- forever falling into his face. 

She’s smiling by the time she opens her eyes. The peace that she felt earlier settles in her again, and the spark starts pulsing in her chest, sending warmth down to her fingertips. She almost sobs with relief. Her powers and Clint’s bow are the only hope Pietro has. 

Wanda lifts her arms to her sides, flinching as the injured one is jostled. Energy flows out from her hands, and red and pink lights chase away the darkness of the empty warehouse. 

The metal door screeches as it opens, revealing a solemn-faced Clint. His expression transforms to wonder as he walks in. “Holy shit,” he breathes. 

The room falls dark as rushes to Clint. “Did you find him?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” he says, his shoulders dropping. He rubs his hand over his face. “He’s in a base on the other side of the city. It’s easy enough to get to, but it’s completely overrun by Hydra agents inside. The weapons they have...I think they look like they’re the same tech as the scepter.” He slumps onto a chair, and drops his head into his hands. 

“What is it?” she asks, not liking the defeated curve of his back. 

“Things got rough the last time I was in Budapest, but they weren’t this bad. I had help then. It was just me and Natasha, but she counts for like 20 people, so we made it out okay.” 

“Can’t you call her?” 

“I did. Her number’s disconnected. All her numbers are disconnected. I’ve left her messages, but I don’t know when she’ll get them. I’ve called everyone I know, but no one’s answering," he says before he scoffs and looks away, "Guess they’ve got their own problems.” 

“Enough,” Wanda says. Clint's head snaps up to her, his eyes wide. “I’m sorry about your friends and what has happened to you, but we don’t have time to sit around and feel bad for ourselves. I may not be your Natasha or a spy or a _killer_ , but I can help. My brother is locked up somewhere. They will torture him, hurt him, maybe even kill him." She breaks off and covers her mouth with a trembling hand for a second. "You said the scepter took your mind, just like it tried to take ours. You understand what it's like. We have to find my brother, even if we have to face all of Hydra to do so.” 

Clint stares at her open-mouthed. “I, uh, didn’t catch most of that because I have no idea what language you were speaking, but I think have a pretty good idea what you were saying," he says. "You’re right. Here’s what we’re going to do.” 

-

The boots are uncomfortable. They’re too tight and rub painfully against her blisters. Wanda’s gotten used to bare feet, even to the flats she had bought in the store in Vienna, but the boots annoy her. 

“Knock it off. You’re making me nervous,” Clint says, glancing away from the road to look at her. 

“I do not understand English. I have told you many times now,” she says. 

“Yeah, yeah. Just relax, okay, and stick to the plan.” His voice grates on her ears. Wanda out the window and shifts her feet inside the boots again. 

It’s dark by the time they get out of the car. Clint said they had to wait until nightfall to attack. It was a nightmare for Wanda to sit all day, stewing in her nerves, imagining one horrific scenario after another. She had been so worried that she didn’t even flinch when Clint showed up again and threw a pair of boots at her. 

She rolls the jacket sleeves above her elbows and fingers the thick material. She’d been wearing it when Hydra attacked her and Pietro at the hotel. Clint had told her to leave it behind, that it’s bright red color would draw too much attention, but she’d refused. She and Pietro had shared the jacket. It was all she had of him. 

“Alright, let’s do this. Just stay close to me and, uh, when you do your magic light thing, try to aim it at the bad guys. My ears rung for hours after you knocked me out last time.” 

Wanda nods tensely. They sneak around to the back entrance. Or at least Clint sneaks around. No matter how quietly Wanda tries to walk, her boots make it sound like she’s stomping across the gravel. While Clint and his bow take out the guards, Wanda has to look away and cover her ears with her hands. She doesn’t want to know if Clint has killed the men. 

“Come on,” he whispers to her, lightly tugging on one of her sleeves. 

Wanda exhales shakily and follows Clint into the building. From the outside, it looked like the countless other buildings on the street. Going in, Wanda expects the same white walls she’d seen in the prison that she and Pietro had been kept, or at least some kind of hint that there is something awful going on inside. Instead, the inside of the building looks like any other building. Wanda looks around as they make their way to the front. There’s a receptionists’ desk there, worn-looking couches and chairs in the lobby, and a sign that reads in big, bold letters _Nix Enterprises_. There is smaller text underneath the title, but it’s too dark for Wanda to make out. 

“This way,” whispers Clint. He holds his strung bow loosely in front of him, and nudges her toward the stairs. 

The lights are off in the stairwell, and Wanda stumbles back, grabbing a fistful of Clint’s shirt to keep from falling. 

“Hey, do your light thing,” he tells her quietly. 

Wanda raises a trembling hand. She and Clint hold their breath, waiting to see if her powers will work. Slowly, the spark starts to work its way down to her hand until it finally glows a dim red color. They both sigh in relief. Guided by her glowing hands, Wanda and Clint walk down several flights of stairs, to the seventh sublevel. 

Clint pauses at the door, his hand hovering over the handle, and says, “I disabled the alarms upstairs, but there’s nothing I can do about these. It’s gonna go off as soon as I open the door, and it’ll be maybe two minutes before Hydra agents show up.” She feels nauseous. It must show on her face because he quickly adds, “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine. All three of us are going to make it out of her tonight.” 

They nod at each other. Clint counts to three, and pulls the door open. 

Deafening sirens fills the air and flashing lights momentarily blind her. They manage to run down an entire corridor before several Hydra agents corner them. It’s too crowded for Clint to fire his arrows, but he uses the bow to hit people. The crunching sound of breaking bones mixes with the sirens' wails, and Wanda has to lean against a wall to keep herself from throwing up. 

She has her hands on her knees when she sees a masked man with a gun bearing down on her. Without any time to second-guess herself, Wanda throws up her hand and a surge of light bursts from it, knocking the man back against the wall. His unconscious body slumps to the floor. Two more Hydra agents grab her arms, each of them pulling her in opposite directions, as if they were trying to tear her body in two. Burning light erupts from her body and the two men are thrown against the walls. 

Clint’s voice cuts through the chaos. “This way!” he shouts, signaling toward another corridor. She jumps over their prone forms and follows Clint down one corridor after another. With his bow and arrows, he takes down most of the men chasing after them. Wanda continues to fire energy spheres behind her, hitting the occasional stray agent before they can get close to them. 

Wanda and Clint finally stop in front of a large steel door, one that is painfully familiar to her. Without waiting for Clint’s instructions, she hurls another energy sphere, this one more pink than red in color, and it unlocks with a quiet _click_. Clint curses under his breath, and opens the door with a violent kick. 

They rush in expecting an army full of Hydra agents, doctors, scientists, even Strucker himself. Instead, there’s only Pietro strapped to a long metal table. He is morbidly still, so still that Wanda can’t tell if his chest is moving. 

A sob tears it way out of her throat as she runs to his side. She drops to her knees next to him and presses her ear to his chest. It’s several agonizing seconds before she hears it, but his faint, unsteady heartbeat is the most beautiful thing she’s ever heard. 

“Pietro! Pietro, wake up! Please, wake up,” she says, shaking his shoulders, her tears falling onto his chest. 

She hears footsteps and shouts echoing down the corridor. She look around wildly looks around for Clint until she finds him. He’s in an adjacent room, typing away on a computer, and holding an arrow between his teeth. 

“Clint, help!” she calls over her shoulder. He waves his hand and keeps typing for another minute before running over to them. 

“He’s not waking up,” she says, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. 

“He’ll be okay. We just have to get him out of here,” says Clint as he puts one of Pietro’s arms over his shoulders. Wanda takes his other arm, and together they heft Pietro up and carry him out. 

As they round the first corner, they crash into three Hydra agents. Clint reaches for a knife, but Wanda beats him to it, and throws a crimson sphere at the men. 

A voice rings out over the loudspeakers, yelling first in German, then in Hungarian, and finally in English. 

“Here,” Clint yells over the noise, and maneuvers them into a stairwell. 

They huff and groan as they drag Pietro up seven flights of stairs, all the way fighting off the Hydra agents that follow them. 

The door to the first floor opens to reveal Baron Strucker flanked by dozens of guards. Wanda notices that several of them have syringes in their hands, filled with the same milky liquid that had kept her mind clouded for months. The spark flares angrily in her chest at the sight. 

“It’s very nice to see you again, Wanda. And I’m so pleased to see you’ve brought our pesky spy to our door. You’ve been giving us a lot of trouble,” he says, turning to Clint. 

“Yeah, well, I'd apologize, but...” Clint trails off with a smirk and a shrug of his shoulders. 

“I do wonder, Agent Barton, why you continue to carry out a mission for an organization that no longer exists.” Wanda tenses further at the self-satisfied look on Strucker's face. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“Surely you must have heard, Agent Barton, that S.H.I.E.L.D. was infiltrated by my men, and that it has been disbanded.” Wanda hears the sneer in Strucker’s voice. She knows that whatever comes next will be bad news for Clint. “Didn’t anyone inform you that Director Fury is _dead?_ ” 

Clint sucks in a breath. The air is still and tense around all of them until Pietro gasps loudly and flails against Wanda and Clint. 

Everyone springs into action. Strucker moves out of the way as Hydra agents flood the stairwell. Clint pulls his bow out with one hand and uses it to push aside nearby agents. Wanda throws orb after orb of red energy, the burning a hole in her chest. 

It isn’t enough. Pietro’s gasping and shaking and screaming between her and Clint, and there’s only so much that they can do against so many Hydra agents. They’re being pushed further and further down the stairs. 

Pietro starts vibrating against her. He screams in agony, and something tears inside of Wanda at the sound. She pulls Pietro’s arm off her shoulder and hands him to a confused Clint. 

She moves in front of them and raises her arms at her sides. That spark, the one she’d hated and feared so much, ignites above her heart. Her entire body glows scarlet. 

From somewhere above them, Strucker yells, “Stop the girl!” 

Wanda doesn’t give them a chance. Two glowing spheres explode her from outstretched hands and tear through the stairwell. The strange weapons hiss and clatter to the ground, and the men drop to their knees, clutching their heads in pain. The room glows red for a moment before being drowned in darkness. 

“W-Wanda?” she hears Pietro gasp. 

“Pietro,” she says. Her arms drop and she runs to her brother. 

“We have to get out of here,” Clint tells them, “Before someone calls in reinforcements.” 

They hold Pietro between them and stagger up the stairs and out the front door. The cold night air slaps Wanda’s face, and she a sudden weakness nearly makes her fall. Only her hold on Pietro keeps her upright. 

Clint’s breathing hard, but he manages to guide them to the car. The ride back to the warehouse is short but tense. Pietro’s shakes in the backseat the entire time, his pained gasps the only sound in the silent car. Clint’s grip on the steering wheel is so tight that his knuckles are white and the veins in his hands pop up. Wanda’s powers have left her drained and with a bloody nose. 

Once they get to the warehouse, Clint doesn’t help get Pietro inside. Instead, he pulls out a phone and moves away from both of them. Wanda doesn’t know if what Strucker said was true, but it’s clear that it’s shaken Clint. She looks away with sigh and goes to her brother’s side. 

“Pietro,” she says, and touches her hand to his face. He’s still again. There’s a thin sheen of sweat covering his face and body, even though the night is cold and he’s only wearing a pair of white shorts. She freezes when she sees his hair. 

It’s white. His hair is almost completely white. There are only a handful of black streaks left. She reaches up and runs her hand through the tangled curls, not wanting to think about how much or how fast they must have forced him run. 

“Wanda?” he says, his voice barely audible, his eyes only just open. “Wanda, you have to get out of here. They’ll find you. They’ll take you away. I can’t – ” 

“Pietro, it’s alright. You’re safe. _We’re_ safe,” she says, holding his hands in hers. 

He looks around them, his eyes now wide open, before looking back at her. “Wanda? You’re okay?” 

“Yes, yes,” she says, tears trailing spilling over her eyes. Pietro sighs and pulls her to him. 

Clint finds them several minutes later still wrapped in each others’ arms. She feels Pietro tense around her. 

“No, it’s fine, Pietro,” she says as helps him to his feet. “This is Clint. He’s not with Hydra. He’s S.H.I.E.L.D.” 

“Not anymore,” Clint says, his voice hard. 

“What?” 

“I finally made contact. Strucker was right. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s gone.” Clint’s face is haggard, the lines around his eyes sharper than before. The tape he’d had over the bridge of his nose has fallen off. 

“What are you going to do now?” Wanda asks quietly. 

Clint sighs and rubs his face. “I’ve gotta get back to the States. I still need to find Natasha, see if she’s alright. Figure out what to do after. You two should come with me. Hydra’s still out there, and it won’t be long before they find you again. Things may have gone to hell with S.H.I.E.L.D. but you'll probably be safer in America. I can talk to some friends of mine, they can – ” 

“No,” Pietro speaks up. “We don’t need your help.” 

“Pietro!” Wanda says. “He saved you. He saved both of us.” 

“I don’t care. We can’t trust him.” 

“You’re the one that wanted to go to America.” 

“Look, it’s your choice. You can stay here if you want. I’m not going to force you to do anything,” Clint says. He and Wanda share a look. 

“Thank you,” she says with a small smile, “For everything.” 

"You're staying?" he asks, but his face shows that he already knows the answer. 

"Yes," Wanda says as she takes Pietro's hand. Neither of them want to run anymore. She looks back to Clint with what she hopes is a reassuring smile. “I hope you find your friends.” 

“Me too,” he says. He moves to hug her, but Pietro steps in front of her. 

“If you touch my sister, I will put my hand through your face,” he says. Wanda makes an indignant noise in her throat, but Clint just huffs a laugh and nods wearily. 

“There's food, money, and some supplies. Take whatever you need," he tells them as he climbs back into the car. "Good luck, both of you, and be careful." Pietro start to protest, but Clint cuts him off. "Here,” he says, and out over the window to hand Wanda a crumpled piece of paper, “In case you two run into any more trouble.” 

Wanda holds the paper in her hand and watches Clint drive off, Pietro silent at her side. 

“Are you alright?” she asks him when Clint’s car has vanished into the horizon. 

“Fine,” he says, her voice terse. She sighs and puts an arm around his waist. 

“Come on,” she says. "You should eat something." 

Pietro limps a few steps, hissing in pain, before he stops and turns to her. He puts his hands on her shoulders and looks her in the eye. 

“You should have just left me there. It was too dangerous to go up against Hydra," he says, "But thank you.” 

Wanda blinks back tears and presses a kiss to his forehead. “I told you I’d keep you safe,” she whispers. Pietro laughs, and they walk into the warehouse, their arms around each other. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once again to everyone who's read, commented, and left kudos! I'm forever grateful!! Just a side-note: this chapter was initially going to include much more, but since it was getting too long, I had to split it. I'm going to try to keep it at six chapters, but it's likely I'll have to add another chapter.

Pietro’s arm lies heavily across her shoulders as he leans on her. He huffs and tries to run ahead, but Wanda keeps a tight hold on his waist as she slowly guides him off the road and into the warehouse. A cold weariness has settled deep into her bones, and all she wants to do is curl up on the floor and sleep for days, but with Pietro hurt and Hydra still after them, sleep will just have to wait. 

She disentangles Pietro from her arms and helps him sit down on a table. Earlier, Clint had shown her where he’d hidden a small stock of food and supplies. She hurries to the spot and drags a large black duffel bag over to where her brother is, her arms straining against the weight of the it. She digs through it, looking for something to cover up Pietro. Wanda empties the bag, but the only clothes she finds are a pair of black cotton socks. 

“Here,” she says, peeling off her jacket and draping it over Pietro’s shoulders. 

She turns back to the clutter on the floor, picking through it until she finds disinfectant and bandages. The soles of Pietro’s feet are messes of bruises and blood. Wanda gingerly touches a wet cloth to his feet, and he flinches so hard he almost falls off the table. 

“I’ll do it,” he says as he steadies himself, and takes the cloth and bandages out of her hands. As he cleans and wraps his feet, Wanda picks out two foil-wrapped packages of food from the bag. They’re crackers and something else she can’t identify, but she bites into them with relish, not caring about or even noticing the taste. Pietro tugs on the socks, and reaches for a package, his curls falling across his forehead as he leans down. 

Wanda swallows the food roughly and stares at Pietro. “Is your head okay?” she asks slowly. 

“What?” he says through a mouthful of food. 

“When they took you away…I saw your head. There was blood here,” she says, reaching up to lightly touch the spot. 

“Oh. It’s fine. I’m fine,” Pietro says, waving off Wanda’s concern. 

“Pietro – ” 

His sigh cuts her off. He brushes his white curls off his forehead to show her a small row of neat stitches. 

“It hurts, but I’m fine,” he says. 

She narrows her eyes at his forehead and the image of the blood staining his hair red mixes with the reality in front of her. 

“Okay, but let me know if you start feeling sick,” she tells him. She knows better than to ask what else Hydra did to him. 

“How long will we stay here?” he asks her when she crouches back down to the floor. 

“Not long. Clint wouldn’t have left us here if he didn’t think we’d be safe, but Hydra’s looking for us and it won’t be long until they find us again. I think we can stay the rest of the night, but we should leave after that.” 

Pietro nods and tries to swallow a yawn. Wanda sets aside their things, rolls the bag into a ball, and holds it out to Pietro. 

“You should get some rest,” she tells him. 

He doesn’t answer her or take the bag. His eyes are focused intensely on her outstretched arm. Her left arm. 

“What happened?” he asks, his voice tight. 

Wanda’s eyes drift down to her bandaged arm. Blood has soaked through the white bandages, making the wound look gorier than it actually is. 

“When Hydra took you,” she starts slowly, “When they took you, I ran after you. They had guns. I tried to use my powers to make them stop working, but one of the bullets grazed my arm.” She tries to smile at Pietro, to look reassuring, but he refuses to meet her gaze. 

Tense seconds tick by, until he suddenly slaps his hands hand on the table and stands up. He tries to pace, but because of his injured feet, he limps and hobbles around, holding onto the table with one hand, the other clenching and unclenching at his side. 

“You would have done the same thing,” she says quietly, “If they had taken me and you were left behind, you would come after me.” 

Pietro stills and slowly turns to her, his eyes resigned and his mouth drawn into a tight line. “You’re right,” he says, “Nothing would have stopped me from chasing after you. It feels like that’s all I do now.” 

“It’s a good thing you have super-speed, isn’t it?” Wanda says, trying to smile. Pietro gasps out a dry laugh, and pulls her into a tight hug. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks into her hair. 

“Yes.” 

“What do we do now?” 

“Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch and try to find a car in the morning.” 

“I can – ” 

“No,” she says, pulling away from him, “You can’t run like this. We’ll drive away from here.” She knows Pietro wants to argue, she sees it written in the lines on his face, but the exhaustion and the pain must win out because he relents with a small nod. 

He sleeps against a wall, the bundled bag beneath his head, and his arms crossed across his chest. Even asleep, the frown lines remain carved into his forehead and around his mouth. 

Wanda changes the bandages on her arm. She peels off the clunky boots to keep from making too much noise. Other than Pietro’s light snores, the night is quiet and still. Wanda takes small, silent steps as she walks around the room, checking in every corner and behind every metal container for any stray supplies or clothes. 

The faintest creek from outside makes her pause, one foot raised mid-step. She stands next to the door and tilts her head to listen. Everything’s quiet. There are no crickets, no distant cars rolling by, not even the hint of a breeze. She presses her hand to the cool metal before going back to her exploring. 

The tights are sweaty and her toes are scrunched together inside of them. She wriggles them as the walks and rolls her ankles, wincing as the one she’d injured earlier twinges painfully. 

The room is dark, almost pitch black. The only light source is the stray moonlight that drifts in from the dirty windows. Her breath catches in her throat as she stares at those windows. They remind her of the cell she was kept in for years. A thrum of fear pulses inside her and she’s tempted to light one of her red spheres, but it’s too dangerous and would draw the Hydra agents looking for them. 

Pietro groans quietly in his sleep, and he shifts enough that the bag slips down. Wanda rushes to him, and gently readjusts the makeshift pillow. He doesn’t wake up, only turns his head toward her and mutters unintelligibly under his breath. It hurts to see him like this, in pain and exhausted even when he’s supposed to be sleeping. Pietro shifts again and a stray white curl falls across his eyelid. Wanda brushes it back into place, and stands up. Pietro needs clothes. It’s too cold in the warehouse at night. 

There are twin metal cabinets half hidden in a dusty corner. Wanda’s already checked behind and inside them, but she hasn’t been able to look on top of them. Bracing one hand against the wall and the other against the cabinet, she slowly pushes herself up until she manages to grab the edge of the cabinet. As she’s pulling herself up, she scrapes her hand against a sharp corner and has to bite her lips to keep from screaming. Her other hand touches something made of cloth and she clenches her fist around it, her arms screaming in pain from holding herself up, and finally lets herself drop to the floor. The ache in her ankle intensifies, and she has to limp back to where her brother is sleeping. 

She hastily wraps another bandage around her hand, and moves to Pietro’s side, shaking out the cloth she’d found as she sits down. It’s a small brown backpack. Inside, there’s a shirt and a pair of pants, both black and both clearly too small for her brother. They’ll have to do for now. She places the clothes on Pietro’s lap and runs her hands along the inside of the backpack. There’s a small bundle at the bottom of the bag, and she tugs at it until the loose seams give away. Her hands touch paper. _Money_. When she pulls out the colorful stack, she’s surprised to find that it isn’t only Hungarian currency, but banknotes from various parts of Eastern Europe, including Transia. She thanks Clint mentally, and stuffs the money back into its hiding spot. 

She packs the bag with supplies – the rest of the food, the bandages, the small phone she’d found. When she finishes, she walks a few more laps around the room to keep herself from falling asleep. She’s moving past the window, planning where she’s to go to going to find a car, when she hears it: the sound of a boot scraping against gravel. She freezes until she hears another sound, the creak of someone moving metal. All the pain and ache in her bones vanishes and she sprints to Pietro’s side. 

“Pietro,” she whispers, shaking his arms, “Wake up!” 

Pietro startles awake, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping. “What is it?” he asks in a slurred voice. 

“Shhh. Someone’s outside. We have to go,” she says as she wraps her hand around his and helps him to his feet, shoving the clothes at him as soon as he’s steadied himself. He gets dressed as she stuffs her feet into her boots, and only just remembers to grab the backpack before she and Pietro leave. They creep across to the back of the room where there’s second door, half hidden by the cabinets. 

“We’re going to have to run. Do you think you can – ” 

“Yes. As soon as we get outside, jump onto my back,” Pietro says. His posture is rigid, and he’s trying to hide his shaking hands behind his back. Wanda hesitates. Pietro’s in no condition to be running at normal speed, much less running at super speed and carrying his sister at the same time. She almost tells him that they should try to fight off the Hydra agents, but she hears the main door _screech_ as it opens and it frightens her so much that she wrenches the small door open and leaps onto Pietro’s back. Pietro tightens his hands around her legs and stars to run. He’s not moving as fast as he has in the past, but she hopes it'll be enough to outrun Hydra. 

She glances behind her to see a hoard of Hydra agents running out of the warehouse. Some jump into nearby cars, others chase after them on foot. Wanda curls her fingers and tosses a small red sphere their way. It isn’t anywhere near as big or bright as the ones she’d used earlier, and the effort of focusing the energy into a concrete shape makes her sag against Pietro, but it slows down the cars that were barreling toward them. 

“Hold on,” Pietro shouts hoarsely. He starts picking up speed, going faster and faster until the world blurs around them. 

It’s only five minutes later when Pietro stops suddenly, the force of it making Wanda fall off him and crash to the floor. He plops down next to her, his hands tangled in his hair and his chest heaving. 

“S-sorry,” he gasps. 

“It’s okay. Are you alright?” she asks, rubbing his back. 

He nods wearily and stands up. “We’re still in Budapest, but I think this is as far as I can run right now,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“It’s fine. We got away from Hydra.” 

“For now,” he says, looking down at her with resigned eyes. 

Wanda pauses and looks at their surroundings, before meeting Pietro’s eyes. “Come on, we have to get off the streets,” she says, holding his hand and tugging him down the street. They’re in a crowded, heavily-trafficked part of the city. They have to resist the instinct to gravitate toward emptier, smaller streets. It’s easier to blend in with a large crowd, most of the time, at least. 

A woman in a comically-large hat eyes them warily as she passes by them. She sniffs at Pietro’s white hair and his bare feet, and mutters something about youths and their fads. Wanda sees Pietro’s jaw tighten. She grabs his arm and hurries him on before he can snap at the woman. 

After a couple blocks, Pietro reaches over to one of the dozens of stands that line the streets, and snatches a cap, his hands moving too fast for the vendor to notice the theft. He pulls the cap low over his eyes, and tucks his white curls in as far as he can. He glances over at Wanda, his face pinched, but she doesn’t say anything. She squeezes his arm, and they walk hurriedly on, both of them carefully looking at their surrounding and scanning the faces in the crowd. 

They stop near a building that has boarded up windows and doors. Pietro peers over one of the windows and looks into the darkened building. 

“It’s empty,” he says. 

They look around to see they're being watched, but the surrounding area is empty. They each grab a corner of the plank and pull until it splinters and falls off in two pieces. Pietro climbs in first and helps Wanda in. She winces as his hands rub against the cut in her palm, but shakes off his concerned look. 

It’s dark enough inside that Wanda has to hold up a shining palm to guide their way through the apartment building. The spark in her chest is faint and cold, and the her hand glows weakly. 

Even sustaining a dim light is draining. She leans against Pietro’s side and they walk through the building’s lobby and into the nearest apartment. There are broken pieces of furniture strewn through the small rooms. Pietro clears a space on the floor for himself and Wanda, and they both fall down exhausted. 

“I don’t understand,” Wanda says, “I’ve never gotten so tired from using my powers.” 

“Maybe you overdid it when you broke me out of that place. You haven’t had a chance to rest. Sleep. I’ll keep watch.” When he sees her open her mouth to protest, he adds, “We’ll figure out what to do afterward.” 

He takes off their jacket and hands it to Wanda. She uses it as a blanket as she stretches herself on the floor, and falls asleep to the comforting sound of Pietro’s slow, steady breaths. 

-

Wanda wakes up surrounded by empty foil wrappers. Pietro’s sitting next to her, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he munches on another of the cracker packs. 

“Sorry,” he says when he sees she’s awake, “Lately I’ve been getting really hungry after I run. I’ll go out later to find more food.” 

“It’s fine,” she says, “I didn’t have time to show you earlier, but look.” She sets the backpack between them and carefully pulls out the stack of money. 

“Clint,” he sneers, “I’m glad you took his money.” 

"He left it for us. He cared enough to -"

“He didn’t care about us, Wanda,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. 

“Of course he did. Why else would he have helped us? You’d still be trapped in that prison if it weren’t for him,” Wanda says. “I understand why you don’t trust him. I didn’t either at first, but he proved that he’s a good person. Do you remember that I told you someone shot an arrow to distract the Hydra agents when we were in Munich? That was Clint. He’s been helping us the whole time. He was even sent from America to help us escape. If the shield people didn't have so many problems, he would have broken us out of Strucker’s prison himself.” 

Pietro’s mouth tightens into a thin line and his eyes are guarded as he looks at Wanda, but he eventually sighs and hands her a pack of crackers. 

“An archer,” he scoffs. “What are arrows against bullets?” 

Wanda eats her food in silence. When she’s swallowed the last bite, she says quietly, “I think we should have gone with Clint to America. It’s too dangerous for us to stay in Europe." The regret is bitter in her mouth. 

“You heard what the Barton said. Hydra is in America as well. We aren’t safe anywhere, no matter how far we run.” Pietro sounds tired and resigned and far older than his twenty-two years. 

“I don't want to run away. I'm...I'm frightened, Pietro," she says. Pietro's eyes soften at her words, and it serves to strengthen her resolve. "Do you remember what I told you in the hotel, before Hydra attacked?” 

Pietro’s frowns and says, “No, no. I told you it’s too risky.” 

“Our entire lives are dangerous, Pietro. Even if we do nothing, even if we sit in this room for years, we’re still going to be in danger. I know we can do this. We saved those people in the bank, we fought off Hydra as we broke you out of prison – ” 

“You did that. You and fucking Clint. I didn’t do anything.” 

“But you _can_ , Pietro, you can. I know it’s dangerous and that it would take a long time, but it’s worth it. We have these powers, these impossible powers – ” 

“That were forced onto us. That made us _freaks_.” 

“Maybe,” she says softly, “You know that I wish we didn't have them. I’m afraid of what I’ll do, and every time I think I understand them, something else happens, but I just want this to be over. I think Hydra was going to use us to hurt people, to do bad things, but we can use our abilities against them. If we stop them for good, we’ll be free. We can go anywhere we want.” 

“You forget, dear sister, that people hated us long before Hydra took us. How many places have we been chased out of? How many people spit in our faces?” 

Wanda hears the familiar bitterness in Pietro’s words, and it makes her shoulders drop. She turns away from him, tears stinging at her eyes. He isn’t wrong. They don’t have a home, not anymore. Years before Hydra had taken them in and turned their lives upside-down, Wanda and Pietro had been forced to move from one place to another, never staying in one place long enough to call home. Even Transia, the place where they’d been born, isn’t home anymore. America had been their shining hope. It was supposed to be a safe place for everyone, no matter where they’re from. But what if it’s all a lie? What if they make the journey across oceans and continents and they’re still hated, still spit on and chased out of restaurants, still unable to find a job or a place to live? 

“Wanda. Wanda, I’m sorry,” Pietro says. He touches her shoulder and turns her around to face him. “I’m sorry. It’s just…it kills me. I don't know how you do it, how you can have such a big heart after everything's that happened to us." She starts to protest, but Pietro's next words leave her silent. "If you…if you really think we have a chance at stopping Hydra, I’ll help you. We’ll do it together. Who knows, with my speed and your – ” He makes a vague, waving gesture with his hands – “Magic maybe we can stop them.” 

“It isn’t magic,” she says, "But I wouldn't mind casting a few hexes on Hydra." The joke feels forced. She knows Pietro’s newfound confidence is faked. She isn’t sure how she herself feels anymore, but trying to do something, anything other than running, feels like the best option they have. 

“Well if we’re going after Hydra,” Pietro says with a put-upon sigh, “I’m going to need shoes.” 

Wanda glances down at Pietro’s feet and winces in sympathy. “Okay, you stay here. I’m going to go find shoes and food.” 

“No, I’m coming with you. It isn’t safe to go alone,” he says, moving to get up. 

“You need to stay off your feet and give them time to heal.” 

“They’re fine!” he insists. 

Wanda narrows her eyes at him, and reaches over and lightly pokes the bottom of Pietro’s right foot. 

“Ow, fuck,” Pietro hisses and gingerly holds his foot between his hands. “Alright, fine. Just promise me you’ll be careful.” 

“I will. I’ll be back soon,” she tells him. She takes about half of the Hungarian banknotes out of the backpack and hides them in her jacket pocket. She pauses by the door. When she looks back, she sees Pietro counting the rest of the money, a cautiously pleased look on his face. Determination flares in Wanda’s chest, and she leaves the building with her head held high and a new resurgence of hope in her chest. 

Outside, she flounders for a second, unsure of where to go, before she finally decides to go back to the large streets she and Pietro had walked through earlier. The first place she finds is a second-hand store. It’s large and there are several people inside, browsing through the varied selection. Wanda walks straight toward the men’s footwear section. As she’s sorting through the various stands, she realizes that she doesn’t know Pietro’s shoe size. She tries picturing his feet in her head, but all she can see are the cuts and bruises and blood. It makes her stomach clench painfully. 

There’s a stand near the bottom that holds shoes that look like they might be around Pietro’s size. She finds five pairs of running shoes. Three of them have holes along the soles, and the other two are intact but look like they’ll fall apart soon. All of them are more expensive than they have any right to be. With Pietro’s speed, the shoes need to be strong and durable. These shoes won’t last him a day. 

Wanda looks through the other sizes, hoping that she’ll find something more durable, but each pair of shoes she finds looks worse than the last. She leaves the store disappointed. 

Outside, stores line every street, and vendors call out from their small carts, urging people to buy jewelry, food, scarves, hats, perfumes, cases, and postcards. Wanda dashes past them, her eyes darting back and forth across the streets, trying to peer into the stores to see what they sell inside. She stops in front of a window display of athletic shoes and sportswear. There’s a large sign hanging over the shoes, it’s bold red letters announcing something important. Wanda tries to read it, but she can only understand some of the words. 

A tall woman walks out of the store and smiles at Wanda. Her bright blonde hair is pulled back into a neat ponytail, and she’s wearing a shirt with the store’s logo emblazed across her chest. 

“Hi there! We’re having a huge, storewide sale right now. Are you looking for something in particular?” The woman’s tone is polite and practiced, her smile just shy of false, but she holds a welcoming arm out to Wanda and she doesn’t ask her to leave. Wanda eyes the shoes in the display again and follows the woman inside. 

“I am looking for shoes like those,” Wanda says, pointing at the window display. 

“For yourself?” 

“No, for my brother.” 

The woman’s eyes brighten. “Fantastic! Follow me,” she says enthusiastically, and guides Wanda to a large section of the store. “Here we are. Is there any specific kind of shoe you’re looking for?” 

“For running – ” Wanda trails off as she sees the wall of shoes. There are dozens of them, in every size, shape and color she can imagine. The only thing they have in common is that they all look very, very expensive. 

Wanda turns to tell the woman that she’s sorry but she won’t be able to afford any of them when the woman's bright voice cuts her off. “These here are excellent for running on treadmills. These down here are better suited for running on pavement, these for – ” The woman keep explaining the differences between the shoes, but Wanda doesn’t listen. She stares at a pair of white shoes. They’re shorter and flatter than the others, and they look less expensive. 

“Those,” Wanda interrupts the woman, “How much?” 

“Oh, these are an excellent choice. They’re designed to be light but durable.” The woman goes on to describe the various attributes of the shoes, what they’re made out of, how they support the feet, before she finally tells Wanda their price. Wanda tries to keep the dismay off her face. Even at a discount, they’re still much more expensive than she had feared. 

“Too much. Sorry,” Wanda says, and turns to leave, her face burning. 

“No, no, wait,” the woman says, waving the shoes around as she gestures. She leans in close and darts her eyes around the store, “I'm so behind on my commissions right now. I’m not supposed to do this, but I can give you our members’ 15% discount if you buy the shoes now.” 

Wanda bites her lips and runs her palms over her dress again and again as she thinks. She stares at the beautiful white shoes and pictures Pietro wearing them. After all that he’s been through, after carrying as he runs across impossible distances, after caring for her for years after their parents’ deaths, he deserves something nice. 

“Okay,” Wanda says, her voice firm and decided. 

The saleswoman’s answering grin is shark-like, but she helps Wanda guess Pietro’s size and doesn’t comment on either Wanda’s faulty shoe knowledge or her stumbling accent. As they walk across the store, Wanda’s eyes are drawn toward a rack of brightly-colored sportswear. Before the saleswoman even turns around to entice her to buy something else, Wanda runs over and grabs a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of pants. 

“These too,” she says as she gently places them on the table by the register. 

The woman’s eyes widen. “Are you sure? We have shorts and tank tops better suited for warm weather. It’s going to be a hot summer.” 

“No, these, please,” Wanda says. She and Pietro don’t buy clothes too often, but she knows that the clothes that are made for colder weather will sell cheaper during Spring and Summertime. 

The woman purses her lips, but rings up Wanda’s things without any further comment. Wanda tries not to flinch as she hands over the money. 

“Have a nice day, and thank you for shopping with us! We hope you’ll come again soon. And seriously, thank you so much. You totally just saved my job,” she says with a cheerful wave. 

Wanda clutches the bag to her chest and rushes out of the store. She’s almost out of money and she desperately wants to get back to Pietro, but they both need food. She goes into a nearby market and buys a loaf of bread, fruit, and water. 

Her ankles hurt by the time she gets back to the abandoned building, and her heart is thudding in her chest. She pauses in front of the window, afraid of what she’ll find inside. She was gone a lot longer than she’d planned on. What if Hydra found Pietro in that time? What if he was gone and had to find him again, this time without help from anyone? She pushes the thoughts out of her head, takes a calming breath, and crawls through the window. 

“Pietro?” she whispers as she walks into the apartment. The living room is empty. She checks every room in the apartment, but Pietro isn’t in any of them. Wanda’s breathing starts to quicken, and the spark that had lain dormant in her chest flares to life. The bags fall from Wanda hands, and she holds twin glowing spheres in her palms. “Pietro!” she screams. 

There’s a loud _whoosh_ of air that moves her hair and dress, and Pietro appears in front of her. 

“Where the hell have you been?” he yells. 

Wanda almost cries from relief. She reaches up to squeeze Pietro’s face between her hands. “I was getting some things, remember?” 

“You were gone for hours, Wanda. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I almost went back to the Hydra base because I was sure they’d taken you.” 

“I’m fine, Pietro. Really. Look, I brought you some things,” she says, holding out the bag like a peace offering. 

Pietro takes the bag, but he holds it loosely at his side and says, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be apart right now, not with Hydra after us.” 

“You needed to rest. Now open the bag,” she says, a grin stretched across her face. 

Pietro rolls his eyes, but relents and opens it and looks inside. His eyes widen as he pulls the shoes out. “Wha- where did you get these?” He takes out the clothes and raises an eyebrow at Wanda. 

“Clint’s clothes don’t fit you, and these are made especially for running. Besides, I think you’d look very nice in blue,” she says with a smile. 

Pietro doesn’t say anything for a long time. He just sits down on the floor and runs one hand over the stretchy material of the shirt. The other hand cradles the shoes to his chest. 

“Thank you,” he finally says. He looks up at Wanda, and she feels affection spread through her chest at the pleased look on Pietro’s face. The lines around his mouth have vanished and his eyes are soft. 

“You’re welcome.” 

Moments pass until Pietro finally says, “I can’t believe I’m wearing Barton’s clothes,” his face twisting in false-disgust. Wanda laughs and tosses him a piece of bread. 

“Go change,” she says. 

Pietro takes his things into the adjacent room, his step lighter than it has been in a long time. 

“How do I look?” he asks when he steps out. The blue long-sleeved shirt is a little tight, but the dark blue pants fit him just right. Wanda smiles widely when Pietro holds up a foot, proudly displaying his new shoes. He’s taken the cap off his head so his shocking white hair matches his shoes and the white stripes of his shirt. He wears the clothes well, but it’s the look on his face that Wanda loves the most. There’s the haughty twist of his lips that she knows well, but there’s also a quietly happy shine in his eyes that Wanda had thought died along with their parents. 

She stands up and pulls him into a hug. “Like my brother,” she says. They sit back down to eat their food, and spend the rest of the morning planning what they’re going to do next. 

-

“Are you sure about this?” 

“No.” 

“Then why are we – ” 

“Shh. I’m trying to concentrate.” 

“Okay, but hurry. The guards are going to be here any minute.” 

“The more you talk, Pietro, the less likely it is that I’m going to be able to get this right.” 

She can practically hear Pietro rolling his eyes. He’s nervous. She is too, but she shakes her hands out and curls her fingers, letting the red energy course through her. A brilliant red sphere appears in her palm. Even as it hovers above her hand, it still feels like it’s part of her, like it’s attached to the spark inside of her. 

“Wanda, come on. Just do it,” Pietro says next to her, his voice low. 

Two men in security turn the corner. They freeze for a split-second before drawing their guns and pointing them at Wanda and Pietro. Wanda shifts her hands to throw the sphere at them, but Pietro runs toward them and before the men can even blink, he’s tossed their guns aside and knocked them unconscious. 

Wanda turns back and launches the red sphere toward the generator. The lights flicker for a moment before the entire room is submerged in darkness. The wind shifts around her as Pietro races to her side. He picks her up without slowing down for even a second, and they race through the hallways, Wanda’s glowing hands guiding their path. 

As they pass by a fire alarm, Wanda twists her fingers and the siren goes off. Panicked voices yell around them in Hungarian and German, but Wanda and Pietro dash by them too fast to catch what they’re saying. 

“Which way?” Pietro yells over the noise. 

“Left at the next corner and then up the stairs.” 

When they run past the room that Pietro had been kept in, he flinches so violently he almost crashes into a wall. Wanda’s overwhelmed by the sudden memory of finding her brother unconscious and strapped to a table, his heartbeat almost too faint to make out. She swallows the bile in her throat, and tightens her hold on Pietro. 

“Are you alright?” she asks him. 

“Fine,” he answers, his voice tight. 

A high-pitched whining sound fills the air as the backup generator kicks in and the lights turn back on. Pietro groans as the brightness momentarily blinds him, but he keeps running. The echoing sound of footsteps behind them makes him speed up. They practically fly up the stairs. 

“Here,” Wanda tells him. He skids to a stop and helps Wanda get down. Her feet have barely touched the ground before she’s run to the building’s second generator. She presses her hands to it and closes her eyes, willing the burning energy inside of her to melt into the metal. 

“Ready?” Pietro asks. Wanda looks over his shoulder at him and nods. 

She moves away from the now-glowing generator and jumps onto Pietro back. Pietro holds the door open with one hand and they count together. 

One. 

Two. 

Three. 

Pietro starts to run just as Wanda twists and throws another red sphere at the generator. With every step, Pietro’s speed increases and Wanda has to clench her eyes shut against the nausea. They only just make it out of the building before the explosion makes the ground shudder, and both of them are thrown across the ground from the force of it. 

Wanda groans in pain as she tries to push herself up with her arms. The all too familiar sound of a gun cocking makes her head snap up. A Hydra agent sneers at her and points his gun at her. 

“Hasn’t anyone told you, little witch? Hydra is legion. Cut off one head, two more shall – _oof”_

“Fuck you,” Pietro says as he shoves the man aside. 

The distant wail of sirens forces Wanda to scramble to her feet. She jumps into Pietro’s arms and they dodge around the small army of Hydra agents that had surrounded them. Wanda tosses another red sphere behind her shoulder as they leave the destroyed base behind them. 

“Are you okay?” Pietro chokes out when he’s finally stopped running. Wanda’s arms are still wrapped in a vice around his neck and her face is buried in his chest. “Wanda, I can’t breathe.” 

She slowly untangles her arms and pushes herself off Pietro. “You…run…very…fast,” she says in between breaths. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever run this fast,” Pietro says, still looking at her with concern. 

Wanda gasps out a laugh and straightens. “W-where are we?” she asks, looking around. 

“Just across the Serbian border, I think.” 

“You ran across an entire country?” The proud grin Pietro gives her in answer makes her smile. She tugs the backpack off her shoulders and lets it fall to the ground. 

“Do you think the police will do anything about all the Hydra agents we left back there?” 

“I don’t know. We don’t even know if the police work for Hydra. At least we took out their base.” 

Pietro snorts. “Yeah. One down, a thousand more to go,” he says, the bitterness creeping back into his voice. 

“Clint said there are bases all over Europe. We can take them out one by one, but it might not be enough. Hydra’s still going to be out there. And…and I don’t think I can kill anyone,” Wanda says, lowering her gaze toward the floor. 

Seconds tick by in silence until Pietro quietly says, “Me neither. I thought about it. When I saw that man pointing his gun at you, I thought about snapping his neck, but...we're not killers. We can’t be like them.” 

“So what do we do? There are too many of them for us.” 

“Strucker,” Pietro says after a while. 

“What about him?” 

“He’s their leader. If he’s gone, it might cripple Hydra long enough for us to stop them,” Pietro says. 

“But how? We can’t kill him, so what can we – wait. Wait!” She smiles at Pietro. It’s the same smile she used to give him when they were children and she wanted something from him. Pietro’s shoulders tense, already anticipating something unpleasant. “I have an idea.” 

-

“This is a very bad idea, Wanda.” 

“Well you agreed to it, Pietro.” 

“That was before I realized you would be putting yourself in so much danger. And in such ridiculous clothes,” Pietro says, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning at Wanda. 

“These are the exact same clothes I’ve been wearing for days. I just embellished them a little,” Wanda says, adjusting the bracelets she’d made a couple hours earlier from scraps of Clint's backpack. 

“Just – ” 

“Be careful, I know. You, too.” 

“I’ll be right outside waiting,” Pietro says. 

Wanda takes a deep breath and walks into the Serbian Hydra base. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone that's read, commented, and left kudos!

Loud music pulses insistently in Wanda’s ears as she pushes through the throng of bodies on the crowded dance floor. Dissonant sounds clash with the strobe lights, and leave her dizzy and disoriented. She manages to take two more stumbling steps before another person blocks her path, this time a pale, thin boy with small metal rings woven through his eyebrows. A girl wearing glossy black lipstick yells something at her, but Wanda can’t hear her over the chaotic noise of the music and voices. She gives the girl a smile that’s more grimace than grin, and ducks through a small break in the crowd before she can say anything else. 

The song speeds up, and the dancers hurry to catch up, their bodies writhing and twisting faster, more wildly. Someone elbows Wanda’s back sharply, and she falls against the bar hard enough that the air is knocked out of her lungs. Her hands wrap themselves around the first thing she touches – a napkin? – and she closes her eyes to shut herself away from the unbearable amount of noise and people around her. 

It's too much. She pushes herself away from the counter and pushes her way through the crowd until she gets to the bathrooms in the back. The cold splash of water on her face helps with the dizziness. She stares at herself in the cracked mirror above the sink, and tries to get herself together. Pietro's counting on her. 

A woman with short black-and-blonde-streaked hair washes her hands in the sink next to hers. She looks at Wanda in the mirror and huffs a tiny laugh. Embarrassed, Wanda takes a few steps back, but the women laughs again, this time kinder, and digs through her purse until she pulls out a pencil. She beckons Wanda closer, and asks her something in Serbian. Wanda can only shrug helplessly, but the woman must take it as a gesture of assent because she raises the pencil to her eyes and starts to carefully line them with black. When she's done, the woman smiles in satisfaction and turns Wanda back to the mirror. 

Wanda calls out a distracted, "Thank you," to the woman as she continues to stare at herself, surprised at how much bigger and prettier her eyes look. 

She walks out of the bathroom moments later, her steps surer than they had been. The music has switched to something quieter, and the nauseating pounding in her head eases. She glances out at the throng of people swaying slightly to the low, melancholic music, and smoothes out her dress, hoping she doesn't stand out as much as she thinks she does. She rubs her fingertips under her newly-lined eyes and turns back to the bar. 

A man hands drinks to a group of people with brightly-colored hair at the far end of the bar. When he turns in her direction, Wanda hesitantly waves her hand to get his attention. 

“Do you speak German?” she asks, trying to make her voice as loud and steady as possible. 

“A little bit,” he says with a smile, “What can I get you?” His words are choppy and Wanda has a hard time understanding him, but it eases some of the tension in her chest. He won’t be able to notice her own stumbling accent. 

“Water,” Wanda answers, her relief making her words a little too exuberant. The man laughs quietly and hands her a bottle. She swallows half of it in one gulp. 

“Where are you visiting from? Germany?” he asks her, resting his elbows on the counter and leaning closer to her. 

“Yes. My brother and I just arrived from Munich,” she says, her hands fiddling with the bottle cap. 

“And where is your brother?” he asks. Something about the way he asked the question, something in his tone, makes Wanda nervous. 

“At the hotel. He doesn’t like crowds,” Wanda says, her voice shaking slightly. She glances over to the small black door at the back of the club. 

“What brings you to Belgrade?” the man asks. Wanda’s eyes dart nervously back to him, and she has to take another gulp of the water before she can answer. 

“We’re – ” 

“Just a sec,” he interrupts before walking over to another group of people. She sighs and lets her head drop to the counter. Her shoulders heave as she takes deep breaths, her nose wrinkling as at the smell of sweat and alcohol in the air. She straightens herself when she hears the man walking back to her. “Sorry about that. You were saying?” 

Wanda takes a quiet breath, smiles as widely as she can, and leans closer to him. “What is that over there?” she asks, nodding toward the closed door at the back. 

The man doesn’t even look to where she’s pointing before he answers. “VIP room,” he says before quickly asking, “What’s your name?” 

“Wanda,” she answers distractedly, her eyes on the door. “Do you think I could go in there? I’ve never been in a VIP room. I’ve never even been in a club before, actually. It might be – ” 

“I'm sorry, no. It’s only for the club owners and their friends. I’d help you sneak in if I could, but the door only opens with a keycard and there’s heavy security inside,” he says. His tone is different than it had been earlier, colder, and it makes Wanda even more nervous. 

“Really? Not like men with guns, right?” she says, forcing a laugh. The man shrugs and looks away. “So much protection for one little room,” she says, almost under her breath. He holds up a hand and moves away to help another customer. 

Wanda takes the opportunity to duck away, edging along the side, making slow progress against the mass of people. When she finally crosses the dance floor, she leans near the black door and tries to look casual, like one of the dozens of excited people around her. She’d asked Pietro to stay behind because she didn’t it was a good idea to put him in such a large group of crowd, that he would draw too much attention to himself. She imagines him standing with his back rigid and his arms crossed over his chest, scowling at everyone and grumbling about not having any space to run. 

Wanda tugs at the long bracelets that circle her wrists and lets one hand drift closer to the door. Slowly, her hand starts glowing with energy. She’s about to press it to the keypad when a girl in fishnets and a red dress staggers in front of her, muttering something and pointing at Wanda’s jacket with a drunken smile. Wanda hides her hand behind her back and nods at the woman, sighing in relief when she moves over to the bar. Wanda turns and touches her hand to the keypad. There’s a quiet _beep_ as the door unlocks. 

Biting her lips, she glances around, half-expecting to see someone staring at her in suspicion, but she’s partially hidden by the shadows and no one’s pays her any attention. She pushes the door open just enough for her to slip in before she quickly shuts it behind her. She spins around, her lips ready with excuses, but finds the room empty. Afraid that someone will come in and find her at any second, Wanda hurries around the room, frantically looking for another door, the one she knows is hidden there somewhere. 

They’d waited for hours outside, Pietro annoyed and vibrating with impatience, but the man never came back out. Wanda was sure that it meant there was a Hydra base hidden somewhere inside or underneath the club, just like the base in Budapest had been disguised as the headquarters for Nix Enterprises. 

But now she can’t find the entrance into the base. Even after three turns around the room, her eyes scanning every corner and her hands groping along the walls, she still can’t find a door. 

The tinkling sound of falling water draws her attention. There’s a small waterfall built into one of the room’s walls. A series of red light bulbs line the floor underneath that make the water look red when lit. Wanda had looked at it, but hadn’t found anything there. She walks toward it again, almost mesmerized by the way the lights make the water glow, and stares so hard her eyes start to blur. There, behind the water, is a break in the wall, a little crack that’s almost completely hidden by the rushing red water. It’s bitingly cold as she pushes a glowing hand through it. She touches her palm to the wall, and there’s a _click_. The water stops, and the wall divides, one side sinking in. 

Wanda steps through quickly. She’s pushing the door closed when a hand grabs her wrist and roughly turns her around. A tall man in a uniform growls something at her. 

“I’m sorry,” Wanda stutters out in German, “I don’t speak Serbian.” 

“Leave,” the man answers, his lips curling over his teeth. 

“I-I was just looking for the bathroom,” Wanda says. The man reaches for the door without letting go of her arm, his fingers digging painfully into her skin. 

Panic starts to rise in Wanda’s throat, but she uses her growing fear to coax energy into her palms. With her free hand, she throws a bright red sphere into the man’s scowling face. He slumps to the floor unconscious as Wanda tears down the nearest corridor, her heart hammering in her chest. 

She knows exactly where she is. The sea of white is unmistakable. It seems Hydra’s taste in decoration doesn’t change much from base to base. 

At every corner she comes across, Wanda presses herself against the wall and peaks around, waiting until the guards have walked by. After an endless maze of white hallways, she finally gets to a room with a large steel door. She pushes her way inside, and knocks out the scientist working on the computer with a carefully aimed sphere. A pang of regret almost makes her pause, but then she remembers being poked and prodded at and pricked with needles, and she pulls the man’s unconscious form away from the desk. 

Wanda’s never used a computer before in her life, but she remembers Clint mentioning that he had taken some of their files from the base in Munich, and she’d seen him on the computer at the Budapest base where Pietro had been kept. 

She presses her hands to the screen, closes her eyes, and concentrates, hoping that the energy she’s pouring into it will erase the information they have on her and her brother, that this computer is connected to the others Hydra’s sure to have hidden in the base. She doesn’t know if it works, if she can even do something like that, but she takes the flickering screen as a good sign. There’s a dull _pop_ , and she pulls her hands away just before it goes blank and tendrils of black smoke start coming out. 

Wanda tears her eyes from the computer and slowly looks through the thick window that divides the room. Her heartbeats echo in her ears as she pushes herself forward and walks into it. 

Standing in the middle of the procedure room, one almost identical to the one where she and her brother had been tortured again and again until their abilities surfaced, is a surreal experience. The grief, the agony, the loss of not just her own suffering, but of all those that were forced through the same process overwhelm her. 

There are ghosts trapped in that room. She doesn’t know who they were, what they looked like, what they’re lives were like before Hydra took them, if they have families still looking for them or if they were orphans like Wanda and Pietro, but she mourns them just the same. 

The lives that Hydra has taken, the empty look that Pietro will sometimes get on his face, the white in his hair, the terrifying moments where the speed is tearing his body apart, it all floods Wanda with conviction. 

She raises her arms, and the spark roars in her chest. Burning energy races through her, reaching her palms in a flash. Large red spheres wrap around her hands, but instead of throwing them as soon as they manifest, Wanda lets more and more energy concentrate in them until the deep red lightens into a brilliant pink. The air grows hot around her, and her skin starts to tingle. She flicks her wrists and the twin orbs pulse before exploding into the room. 

The effort of using so much energy drains her almost immediately, and she collapses on the cold ground. She can’t even raise her head to see the destruction she's caused, how every scrap of equipment Hydra had in the room is gone. It’s better that way; She doesn’t want to see what she can do. 

Screeching alarms and the echo of hurried footsteps force Wanda to her feet. She runs outside, crashing into two Hydra agents as she does so. She weakly twists her fingers until their weapons glow red, and darts around them and down the corridor. Her feet stumble when a wave of dizziness rolls through her, but she catches herself before she can fall. Three more Hydra agents round the corner. They flinch back when Wanda raises a glowing hand at them, but when the light flickers out, the masked men rush forward, their weapons raised. Just before they reach her, a patchy red wave crashes through the room, like the ones she used to make before she learned to focus the spark into a sphere. 

By the time she gets to the door, her sides ache and she’s gasping for air. She manages to make her hand glow just long enough to open the door, almost falling over as she pushes into the next room. 

Exhausted, Wanda staggers to the other door, her hands groping along the walls. Pain explodes in her knees as she hits the smooth floor. The door that leads back to the club opens with a hiss. Wanda raises a shaking hand, but there’s no red light coming from it and the spark in her chest, the one she’s almost grown used to, is gone. A man in a neat business suit walks in, his face blanking with surprise when he sees her before morphing into a scowl. He spits at her in Serbian, snatches her still-outstretched hand, and drags her to her feet. 

The noise of the club, the nauseating flash of lights, and the mass of people nearly knock her back over, but the man pulls her along. A few of the club-goers briefly turn to look at her before going back to their dancing. Seeing a too-dunk, struggling person being escorted out of the club is a frequent occurrence. 

There’s a flash of white hair across the room, and it helps to make her chest a little warmer, her legs just a little stronger. 

Pietro. She has to get back to Pietro. 

With a surge of energy, Wanda stomps on the man’s foot, the blow strengthened by her thick, heavy boots. The man grunts, and his grips slackens, but when she tries to push around him, he sticks his foot out and trips her. She’s grateful for the heavy bracelets she’d made for herself. They keep her wrists from spraining as she falls painfully on them. The man lunges down to grab her, but she kicks her legs out, tilts her head back, and screams as loud as she can. 

Several people turn startled looks toward them. Two women eye the man with alarm and move toward Wanda, one of them helping her to her feet, the other crossing her arms across her chest and glaring at the man. They motion toward other people in the crowd until another two girls joins them. The kindness of the gesture both surprises and touches Wanda, and she’s now sure that the club-goers don’t know that they’re standing over a Hydra base. Her eyes widen when one of the girls wraps an arm around her shoulders. She’s used to Pietro being the only one protective of her. 

“Get out of the way!” A frantic voice tears through the crowd. Wanda’s head snaps in its direction. “Move, move, _get out of my way!_ ” 

Pietro’s white head bobs closer. Wanda had been right; In a room full of people dressed in dark colors, Pietro’s bright blue clothes stands out. His face is burning with fury when he finally gets to her side. 

“You touched my sister,” he says, taking a step closer to the man and moving Wanda behind him. The man has apparently had enough because he takes out a phone out of his pocket and talks quickly into it. 

“We have to go, Pietro. He might be calling the police. Or worse,” Wanda whispers hurriedly into Pietro’s ear, one hand tugging at his shoulder, the other pulling his arm. More people have surrounded them, and she sees several guards entering the room. 

Pietro surges forward, shrugging Wanda’s hands off him, and throws a hard enough punch that the man topples over, blood flowing freely from his nose. Pietro takes Wanda’s hand and together they push through the throng of people. Most of them stand aside, whispering among each other with wide eyes. They let Wanda and Pietro get outside quickly and without any trouble. 

The cold, crisp night air breathes life back into Wanda. Guards follow them out of the club, but before they can even draw their weapons, Pietro has Wanda in his arms and they’re speeding through Belgrade’s brightly lit streets. Wrapping her arms loosely around Pietro’s neck, she relaxes against his back and lets her eyes drift shut. 

She knows when they’ve gotten back to their hideout when the wind has stopped whistling in her ears. 

“Wandaareyoualrightdidtheyhurtyou?” Pietro’s words slur together as he helps her get down. His hands vibrate and blur as they run over her face and arms, checking for any injuries. 

“I’m fine. Tired, but fine.” She slowly lowers herself to the floor, her joints aching, and starts unlacing her boots. “It worked,” she tells him with a weary grin. 

“I was worried. When you took so long, I…I thought they’d caught you,” Pietro says, the lines on his face deepening. 

She wraps and unwraps the laces around her fingers, quietly thinking before finally confessing, “I almost did get caught. Clearing the room took a lot of energy, more than I’ve ever had to use, and it wore me out. Hydra agents found me when I was trying to get out. They almost…” She trails off and gestures with her hands. She can’t bring herself to tell her brother that the men held guns to her face, that they looked ready to drag her away, maybe even kill her. Pietro understands anyway; he always knows what she means to say. His face twists, doubt creeping into his eyes. “It’s almost over. We’ll be free soon,” she says. 

“What if it doesn’t work?” 

“It will,” she says closing her eyes. She’s almost asleep when she mumbles, “It has to.” 

-

The morning sky is a bright, clear blue when Wanda and Pietro go out to buy food at a nearby market. It’s early enough that the streets aren’t flooded with people, a stroke of luck for them since Pietro’s mood has been even bleaker since the club. Wanda’s gaze drifts to his face for the hundredth time since waking up, bitter guilt flooding her mouth. With every other step, Pietro's eyes dart over their surroundings, the lines on his forehead deepening with every passing person he sees. At this point, she’s afraid that the wrinkles will become permanent. Pietro left his hat at home, and he keeps reaching up to run a hand through his hair, tugging at the white locks self-consciously. 

They walk past a bakery, and the smell of freshly-baked bread makes their stomachs rumble. Pietro reaches into the large paper bag he’s carrying and pulls out a piece of fruit. He tries to hand it to Wanda, but she shakes her head. They’ve spent almost all of Clint’s money. The food they bought will have to last them at least a few days. 

Wanda leans closer to him and starts talking quietly about all the people she saw at the club, the hairstyles, the clothes, the makeup. She’d been frightened at first – it was so different to anything she’d ever seen – and even though she could barely stand up by the end, she’d almost found herself almost liking it. She’d even decided to keep wearing the bracelets. She’d forgotten to take the eyeliner off before falling asleep the night before, and hadn’t thought anything about it in the morning. It wasn’t until she’d seen her reflection in the store’s window that she’d remembered about the black lines the woman had drawn around her eyelids. 

“Are you sure about this?” Pietro asks, interrupting her. She flounders for a second, unsure of what he’s asking her before it hits her. 

Butterflies flutter in Wanda’s stomach, and the thrum of fear makes her hands start to glow. She clenches them until the lights dull. A flicker of doubt almost makes her say that no, she’s not sure, that she just wants to hide somewhere safe with him, but the weariness in Pietro’s voice, the tension carved into his face steels her resolve. They can’t keep living like this, always running, always looking over their shoulders. She links her arm through Pietro’s and says in a clear, firm voice, “Yes.” 

Pietro exhales slowly and nods his head. “Okay,” he says, his eyes softening. Their feet slow to a stop. A few people pass by them, one man even motioning for them to move to the side, but Wanda and Pietro are too caught up in each other to care. 

Wanda doesn’t realize she’s crying until she feels something hot run down her cheeks. Pietro smiles shakily and reaches out to brush her tears away. 

They both have so much to say, but neither can find the words to begin. Nothing she says will ever be enough. They’d avoided talking about the years they spent in Strucker’s prison, of what was done to them, focusing instead of surviving, on managing their new powers, on running. When they’re through with Hydra, when they’re no longer running for their lives, then they’ll talk. But not now. Not when she still cries at the memory of Pietro’s screams, not when she gets nauseous at the thought of needles, not when she stills wakes up at night, afraid that Pietro won’t be next to her, that she’ll be stuck inside a tiny, dirty cell with only dust for company. 

Pietro tucks her into his side, one hand balancing the bag of food on his hip, the other wrapped around her waist. He must know what she’s thinking. He always does. “It’s going to be alright,” he whispers, pressing a small kiss to her hair. 

Wanda nods unsteadily before pulling away. They walk in silence through the wide streets, their arms linked together and their heads help up. They don’t shrink away or duck down whenever they pass someone. Not today. Not anymore. 

Two people walk by them – a man and a young boy. The father holds his son’s hand and listens attentively as the boy talks, smiling as small hands gesture wildly. Wanda nudges Pietro and points at the boy’s shirt. There’s a picture of Iron Man painted across it. Pietro tries to hold in a grin, but it breaks across his face. 

They’d seen Iron Man on television years ago, long before they were captured. It was in a village in Romania just a few months after they’d left Transia. They had been travelling almost without stopping, and Wanda had begged Pietro to let them rest for a few days. There was a television in one of the small diners, and Wanda and Pietro had watched it as they ate. They didn’t speak any Romanian, but during the news segment, there was a clip of a man in a red and gold metal suit flying around and saving people. Pietro had been very impressed. 

“Stop laughing at me, Wanda,” Pietro grumbles. 

Wanda smiles at him fondly. “I’m not laughing. I was just wondering if they make Iron Man shirts in your size,” she says. Pietro rolls his eyes, but he can’t hide his pleased smile. For one brief moment, they forget about where they are, what their lives have become. They get to just be two siblings, twin brother and sister, laughing and talking as they walk through Belgrade’s streets. 

The _click_ of a gun being cocked is the only warning they get before several dozen Hydra agents surround them, some jumping down from nearby buildings, others emerging from alleyways and stores. They’d been hiding there, waiting for Wanda and Pietro to walk by. 

Cold fear freezes Wanda, and she blindly reaches out for Pietro. The bag of food drops from his arms as he grabs her hand, his eyes never straying from the Hydra agents around them, and squeezes it in reassurance. 

The sea of agents parts, and Baron von Strucker walks out, his usual mild expression replaced by one of barely-controlled rage. 

“Are you enjoying the Belgrade nightlife, Wanda? It certainly sounds like you had an eventful evening,” he says. Wanda shifts uneasily and glances at Pietro. Before she can even think of an answer, Strucker continues, “I received a phone call last night informing me that someone had broken into our base in Serbia, that the procedure room and the _very expensive_ equipment inside had been damaged beyond repair.” There are small raised veins on Strucker forehead. 

“It was only one room,” Wanda says, fighting to keep her voice steady. 

“You took my research,” he says. His voice is low, chilling, menacing. “You erased years worth of data! Your careless _spell_ –”

“It’s not magic,” Wanda says, too quietly for anyone other than Pietro to hear. 

“- snuck its way into our servers and deleted every bit of information we’d collected over the years on –”

“On how you tortured innocent people, how you killed them? Do you expect us to be sorry for you?” Pietro asks sarcastically. 

“You will be,” Strucker says, his hand motioning to the Hydra agents. “You were careless, telling the bartender your name, about your brother, how you’d come from Munich. Did you think I wouldn’t find you?” The masked men move in tandem, raising their weapons and drawing closer to Wanda and Pietro. Next to her, Pietro is tense, his knees bent, ready to run. “I have displayed an exceeding amount of patience with you two. I was willing to spare your lives in the interest of furthering my studies, but since you have cost me so much, I am no longer willing to tolerate such – _argh!_ ” Strucker screams as he falls to the ground, an arrow buried deep in his shoulder. 

Wanda and Pietro spring into action: Pietro shoots off in a flash of blue and white, snatching the Hydra agents’ guns and carrying them off; Wanda flings red spheres left and right, her aim impossibly precise. Pietro has just skid to a stop next to Wanda, his arms full of weapons, when Clint drops down from the sky, rolling to absorb the momentum of his fall and taking out his bow in one fluid motion. 

“Took you long enough,” Pietro says, scowling at Clint. 

“I was in London, about to get on a plane home, when I got your call. Got here as fast as I could,” Clint says, his eyes focused on the Hydra agents he’s picking off with his arrows. 

Wanda flinches when she finally gets a good look at him. “Clint! What happened to your face?” she asks. The bridge of his nose is swathed in the same white tape he’d worn before, and his face is covered in dozens of fresh cuts and bruises. 

He grimaces and tears his eyes away from the fight for a moment. “I, uh, ran into Hydra. And an ex-girlfriend. It’s a long story,” he says adds when Wanda gapes at him. “Guys, focus. Wanda, you and I are going to stay here and cover each other. Pietro, you take the perimeter, keep Hydra fenced in.” 

Pietro makes a face at Clint, and disappears in a blur. He runs in a wide circle, disarming Hydra agents, and keeping them from straying out of Clint and Wanda’s line of sight. He moves so fast that he leaves wispy white and blue trails behind him. 

Wanda and Clint stand back-to-back, steadily working on thinning the wall of men charging toward them. Wanda’s worked out a passable rhythm. One thin wave every couple minutes to make the guns misfire, and several spheres to knock the men down one at a time. Clint runs out of arrows after a while, but Pietro dashes by and tosses him a group of arrows he’d pulled out of fallen Hydra agents. 

“Thanks,” Clint calls after him. 

Pietro flashes to their side again. “If something happens to my sister, I’ll put one of your arrows through your eye,” he says before disappearing again. 

“Gotcha,” Clint says. 

Wanda shrugs apologetically at Clint, but he shakes her concern away. She turns back reluctantly, and throws a few more spheres. She’s been making them just strong enough to knock someone unconscious, trying to keep from using too much energy. Energy pulses steadily, brightly in her chest, but she’s not sure how much longer she can keep going before she gets worn out. 

The distant wail of a siren breaks her concentration, allowing a masked Hydra agent land a blow on her head. The world darkens for a second and she starts to fall, but someone takes her arm and keeps her upright. 

“You alright?” Clint asks when she can stand on her own again. 

“Y-yeah,” Wanda answers. “Police?” She thought they were finally coming, that Strucker and his men would be arrested, but the sirens are gone. 

“Pretty sure Hydra took care of it. Probably told them we were German terrorists or something, that they were bringing us in.” Wanda almost drops her hands in shock, but Clint just motions for her to get back to work. 

“What do we do now?” she asks, her glowing hands raised in front of her. The tremor in her voice is clear even with the noisy battle going on around them. She’s not used to this. Normally, when she and Pietro have fought with Hydra, it was only long enough to escape, to run away. This, standing her ground and fighting, is new to her. 

Clint glances away from Hydra and looks at her. “Stay calm,” he says, “Stay focused. Keep an eye out for civilians.” Wanda nods, and lets more energy into her hands, so that the deep red color lightens a little. She knows it’ll tire her out quicker, but it’s worth it if it’ll make the fight end sooner. 

A loud _crack_ tears through the air, and Wanda doesn’t even have time to react when she sees a blue and white blur push Clint out of the way. The bullet hits a stray Hydra agent behind them. 

“Fuck,” Clint groans on the ground, rubbing the side he’d fallen on. 

“A ‘thank you’ would be appreciated,” Pietro says, looking down on Clint with a haughty look on his face. 

“Clint, are you alright?” Wanda asks, dropping to her knees next to him. 

“Yeah. Keep your eyes on the fight,” he says, pushing himself to his feet. Wanda and Pietro spin around guiltily. It’s just in time to stop a Hydra agent from firing a strange-looking weapon at them. 

Between Wanda’s spheres, Pietro’s speed, and Clint’s arrows, they’ve taken out nearly all of them, but there are still a few stray agents around. None of them are in position to have shot Clint. She looks around until she spots a figure crouched by a building. 

“Clint!” Wanda yells, pointing at it. It’s Strucker. He’d dragged himself away from the fray and is slumped against a wall, a gloved-hand pressed just underneath the arrow still embedded into his shoulder. His other hand fumbles with the pistol at his side. 

Pietro darts forward, grabs Strucker by his collar, and drags him to Wanda and Clint. Strucker’s on his knees, smiling through bloody teeth at the three of them. 

“You missed,” he tells Clint. 

“I never miss,” Clint answers. “You were a soldier, right? You know what’ll happen if you don’t get that treated. If you answer our questions, we’ll – ” 

“You’ll what? Let me go? Don’t take me for a fool. You wouldn’t have lured me all the way out here if you’d been planning on letting me walk away.” 

Clint opens his mouth to argue or threaten him, but Wanda interrupts. “Are there any survivors?” she asks. 

Strucker tilts his head slowly to Wanda, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I beg your pardon?” he asks in that same falsely-pleasant tone that sends chills up Wanda’s spine. 

“In all your bases, were Pietro and I really the only ones who made it through?” There hadn’t been anyone else at the bases in Munich or Budapest, but she wasn’t sure she believed that she and Pietro were the only ones left. Too many had been taken for that to be true. She feels Pietro move closer to her, knows he can hear the tears in her voice. He stands ramrod-straight next to her. “Did anyone else survive?” she whispers, afraid of the answer. 

Strucker grins maliciously, the pleasantness melting from his face. “No,” he says. 

A lone Hydra agent staggers close toward them, but Pietro runs toward him, knocks him out, and is back at her before she can even blink. 

“What did you do to Wanda and Pietro? Can it be reversed?” They both start at that. As much as they’d been resentful of their powers – Wanda especially was afraid of her abilities – they’d never thought removing them was an actual possibility. After all they’d gone through, she’s not sure she wants them gone. For better or worse, they’re a part of her now. 

Strucker laughs. “I only opened the door for them, tapped the hidden potential that was already locked away in their blood. There's no going back now." 

Wanda takes a step forward. “Why?” she asks Strucker. “Why did you make us this way?" 

“Oh, Wanda. Isn’t it obvious?” he sighs and slowly pushes himself to his feet. He rips out the arrow from his shoulder without even a flinch. “Spies like S.H.I.E.L.D., heroes like Barton and his Avengers, they’re no longer relevant. The world is changing, and you two,” he says nodding to Wanda and Pietro, “Your extraordinary gifts are the key to everything. You will help Hydra remake the world into something... _beautiful_.” Strucker’s face changes, his eyes grow hard and his mouth twists into a cruel sneer, before saying, “It’s just a shame that such precious gifts were given to two low-born gy – ” Strucker’s head snaps back when Pietro backhands him. 

Wanda swallows thickly, seeing the same hurt on her brother’s face that’s clawing at her chest. 

“Easy,” Clint tells Pietro, but his face is dark with anger, too. 

“Are you going to kill me?” Strucker asks with a laugh. He licks the blood off his lips as he looks at Wanda and Pietro with new interest. “ _Can_ you kill me?” 

“No.” 

“Never.” 

“I, however,” says Clint, holding up his bow, “Have no problem with it.” The tip of his arrow grazes the skin between Strucker’s eyes. 

Strucker laughs quietly, the unexpected sound making Wanda and Pietro glance at each other nervously. Quicker than any of them thought him capable of, Strucker rolls to the right, takes his pistol out, and fires several rounds in their direction. Clint ducks down, Wanda holds up her shining palms, and Pietro speeds out of the way. None of the bullets land, but they’re too busy dodging to see Strucker take something out of his jacket. It’s only when he holds it up that they see it: a round, shinning blue stone. 

“You do recognize it, do you not?” he asks with a smile. 

Wanda can’t breathe. She can’t hear any of what Strucker is saying. Everything stops, and all she can focus on is the glowing gem in Strucker’s hand. Even separated from the scepter, she’d know it anywhere. Seeing it again, after she thought she was done with it forever, after no longer being under the dulling influence of the drugs they’d kept her on, is terrifying. She swears her heart’s stopped beating. 

Wanda wants to throw a sphere at Strucker, to knock the stone – the cause of so much of her and Pietro’s suffering – out of his hand, but she can’t. She can’t even move; her legs have melted with the pavement. Pietro’s ragged breathing pulls her gaze away from the gem. They need to do something before Strucker takes advantage of their panicked states. She herself to turn to Clint, her throat itching to ask him for help, but she freezes at the look on his face. 

Clint’s eyes look blank, haunted, like he’s no longer inside his body. His bow is abandoned on the ground, and his normally steady hands are shaking violently. 

Strucker’s still talking, but it’s background noise to the deafening roar in Wanda’s ears. She blinks slowly as her eyes are drawn back to the stone. There’s a prickle in her head, like someone’s whispering to her but they’re too far away for her to make out the words. The heat in her chest has dulled, and an icy, numb feeling has started crawling up from her fingers and toes. It’s only when the stone starts pulsing, humming in that same way it used to when it was attached to the scepter, that Wanda’s powers kick in, her hands burning, glowing bright enough to dim the stone’s hypnotizing light. 

She shakes her head to clear it of the gem’s influence. “Pietro!” she croaks out, startling him out of his own nightmares. His eyes are unfocused and wide when he looks at her, but manages an understanding nod when she motions toward Strucker. The stone is knocked out of Strucker’s hands before he can even clench his hand around it. It skitters away and is lost into one of the surrounding streets. 

The sudden flurry of motion snaps Clint back into the moment. His face is ashen, but he has another arrow strung, his bow pointed at Strucker, who is still as infuriatingly calm as always. 

Pietro takes her arm and whispers to her, “This isn’t working, Wanda. We should leave before this gets any worse.” Wanda’s almost agrees, almost takes his hand, almost calls out to Clint, but then Clint does something that tears a scream from her throat. 

He fires the arrow. 

It cuts through the air at a breath-taking speed and buries itself in Strucker’s chest. 

“Fuck,” Pietro whispers next to her. 

Wanda stares at Clint with open-mouthed horror. She’d told him not to kill Strucker, that she and Pietro had agreed that they wanted him imprisoned, locked up in a cell like they had been. The crumpled body makes Wanda’s stomach twist, and the guilt, anger, and uncertainty war inside of her. 

“Why did you do that?” she asks Clint, “ _Why?_ ” 

Clint’s face is hard when he looks at her. “He killed a lot of people, he was dangerous, and he wasn’t going to tell us whatever he had planned. He had to die.” 

Wanda wants to argue, but she realizes that even though she disagrees that Strucker had to die, Clint is right about one thing: Strucker hadn’t actually told them any of his plans. He’d talked in circles, using their fears against them, killing time, like he was waiting for something. Someone. 

There’s a distant whining sound, and the earth shakes as something flies by high above them. It forces all three of them to look away from Strucker’s slumped body. Pietro pulls Wanda into his arms, and they’re dozens of blocks away before Wanda can even blink. 

“We have to go back!” She yells at Pietro over the noise of the wind. “We can’t just leave Clint back there, not after everything he’s done for us.” 

“It's too dangerous!” He yells back. 

“We’d be dead if it weren’t for him,” she says. “Pietro, please!” He curses in her ear, but turns around and runs back. 

“Did you take him?” Clint asks furiously as soon as they skid to a stop. 

“Who?” asks, jumping out of Pietro’s arms. 

“Strucker! Did you take him?” Wanda and Pietro look back to where Strucker had fallen, but the spot is empty. 

“No. What happened?” 

Clint sighs, his head dropping to his chest. “I’ve looked everywhere, but he’s gone,” he says through gritted teeth. 

“Thought you said you never miss,” Pietro says, his voice thick with sarcasm. 

“I don’t. He must have survived and dragged himself off when we weren’t looking,” Clint says. Wanda and Pietro share concerned glances. She doesn’t know what’s worse: thinking that Clint had killed Strucker, or that he’s alive but managed to escape. Clint adds, “Don’t worry. S.H.I.E.L.D. may be gone, but I’ve got friends who can help with this. We’ll find Strucker. As soon as I get back to the States, I’ll track them down. I hope.” He adds that last part quietly under his breath. 

“Have they still not answered your calls?” Wanda asks carefully. 

Clint’s face darkens. “No. I made contact with someone once, but that’s it.” 

“I’m sorry,” Wanda starts to say, but Clint waves her off. Most of the Hydra agents that had been knocked out have left, but a few of them are still lying on the ground. Clint walks around, collecting his arrows and checking their pulses. 

Pietro touches Wanda’s arm and pulls her aside. “We need to leave. People are coming,” he says, nodding toward the buildings. Almost everyone had stayed away from the area during the fight, but with Strucker and Hydra gone, people have started poking their heads out of windows, some even venturing down into the streets. With the day now fully underway, it won’t be long before the area will be flooded with curious onlookers. 

They start to walk towards Clint when there’s another loud _whooshing_ sound in the sky. All three of them look up to see something flying by. Wanda had thought it was a plane earlier, but now that it’s flying closer, she sees that it’s a human-sized and made of bright, shining metal. 

Clint whoops and pumps his fist in the air. “It’s about damn time someone got my messages!” he shouts at the figure. It circles around them, the air shaking and the ground rumbling as it turns, before it dives towards them. It lands on one knee, the pavement shattering on impact, and hunches its silver body over, hands splayed on the ground. 

“Is that Iron Man?” Pietro asks, almost breathlessly. Wanda’s eyes widen in surprise. She thought Iron Man wore red and gold. 

The figure slowly straightens himself, his back still turned to them. He looks like he’s surveying the area, his head turning from side to side as he takes in the large, open street they’re on. 

“Stark?” Clint calls. 

Wanda takes a frightened step back when the figure finally turns to face them. It’s mouth and eyes aren’t the single thin slits that Iron Man had when she and Pietro had seen him on television. Instead, it’s metal mouth is pulled open into a wide, menacing grin, and the eyes are stretched into elongated ovals, making its face look insect-like, more ant than man. Red light glows from its eyes and mouth. 

“Tony?” Clint asks, his voice no longer relieved, but wary. Pietro’s stance is tense, and he moves closer to Wanda. She glances at him, and gets ready to jump. She’s doesn’t know much about Iron Man, but she’s almost certain that isn’t him. 

There’s a whirring sound, and the metal figure takes one step toward them, raises his hands, and opens fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pietro's "A thank you would be appreciated line" is loosely inspired by a similar line in an issue of All-New X-Factor.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! Sorry that it took me so long to finish this. I hadn't anticipated it being such a long (looooong) chapter. 
> 
> A lot of the action is loosely (and I do mean loosely) based on the set photos for Avengers: Age of Ultron. I have no idea what's going on in those photos, but some bits of it have been included into this chapter. There aren't any actual spoilers, but I just wanted to mention it just in case it bothers anyone. 
> 
> Sections of the chapter are inspired by Avengers Origins: The Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver, Avengers Vol. 3 #19-22, and the Earth's Mightiest Heroes episode "Ultron-5." 
> 
> Thank you again to everyone that's read, commented, left kudos, etc. Special thanks to Sorceress_Supreme and J for being so nice and supportive!

Wanda doesn’t remember how it happened. Not all of it, not the important parts at least. She doesn’t remember the woman, the one who’d stopped them on the street one day. She doesn’t remember what the woman looked like, if she had lines on her face or if her hair was black or blonde or green or white. 

She doesn’t remember the words she’d used to convince Pietro to accept the woman’s offer, only that he had dropped his head on her shoulder and nodded wearily, his stomach rumbling and his body swaying from weakness. She doesn’t remember where the woman had taken them, what the building had looked like, what part of the city it had been in. Maybe she was too desperate to care at the time, maybe she’s forgotten. 

But there are things, images, moments burned into her memory. Little things that she sees when she’s asleep at night, that make her wake up covered in sweat, pressing a fist to her mouth to keep from screaming and waking up Pietro. 

She remembers the group of armed, masked men that surrounded them as she and Pietro walked out of the building. She remembers the warmth of Pietro’s hand as he pulled her down long, unfamiliar streets. She remembers the hunger gnawing at her stomach, the burning in her lungs that left her gasping for breath, the agony in her head that made it feel like it was being split wide open. 

More than anything else, she remembers how Pietro’s voice cracked as he screamed for her, how his hand slipped from hers as they were torn apart and dragged back into the cold building.

The men had taken Pietro down another corridor, far, far away from her, but she could still hear him cry out for her. Even after she was locked in the small, dark room, his voice echoed in the walls.

Her nails bled as she scratched and pried at the door. She screamed and screamed until her voice gave out, until the only sounds she could make were a miserable croak and the sniffling of her nose. 

She doesn’t remember how much time passed, if it was minutes, hours, or days, but she’d been in the dark long enough that when the door finally opened, the sudden burst of light blinded her. She could only see the man’s silhouette, a shadow outlined in unbearable light, but her ears were sharp and she’d listened. His footsteps – light, careful, methodical, precise – and the soft rustle as skin rubbed against cloth were recorded into her memory. They’re a frequent soundtrack to her nightmares. 

When her eyes finally adjusted to the light, Wanda was surprised. She had been expecting a face bisected by a scar, an ugly leer carved onto a pale mouth, a hooked hand, claws, fangs - anything that sounded like one of the many villains from her mother’s stories, but there was nothing frightening about the man. The only strange thing about him was the glass frame around his left eye, and even that was innocent enough. 

He stood casually, his hands lightly clasped behind his back, as he looked at her. 

“Good afternoon, Wanda. It is Wanda, yes? That was the name you gave Ophelia,” he said, pausing to let her answer. 

She pushed herself away from the dark corner she’d been huddled in. “Where is my brother?” she asked, her voice raw. 

A mild smile crossed his face. “Your German is quite poor, Wanda, though I do commend you for your effort. Where are you from?” he asked, his voice amused.

“Where is my brother?” Wanda asked again, staggering to her feet. The worn material of her skirts swished around her ankles familiarly, a small solace in the strange place.

“There’s no need to worry. Pietro is just fine.” She tried to take a step forward, but her knees buckled and she was forced to hold onto the bed for support. The man made a tsk-ing sound and gave her that same amused smile. “Now, Wanda, don’t look at me like that. We - ”

Wanda hadn’t let him finish. With the last bit of strength she had, she lurched forward, her small fists raised to hit the man, to shove him out of the way and run down the labyrinthine hallways in search of Pietro, but he easily stepped aside and allowed one of the masked men into the room. She doesn’t remember the struggle, only that something hard and cold collided her jaw and she stumbled backward, hitting her wrist on the metal frame of the bed. The pain from both injuries made her cough and gag. 

“You must learn to behave yourself,” he said, the faintest trace of warning tainting the soft cadence of his voice, “It is not only your life that you risk, but your brother’s as well. Sleep. We will try again tomorrow.” The heavy door shut with a resonant _bang_ and Wanda was left again in the dark. 

Her wrist hurt where she hit it and her knees were scraped, thin rivulets of blood running down her legs. She could feel bruises forming where the men had dug their fingers into her arms. She wanted nothing more than to collapse on the small, springy bed and fall asleep. 

_“Wanda!”_

Pietro. He was taken into another room somewhere on the other side of the building, but she swore she could still hear him screaming her name. She forced herself up, her body protesting the entire time, and flung herself against the door with renewed strength. 

_“Wanda!”_

She slapped her hands against the door again and again, ignoring the pinpricks of pain, and pressed her ears to the cold metal, wondering if she could really hear Pietro’s voice or if she was imaging it. A strangled sob forced its way out of her tired throat as the helplessness clawed at her. It was her fault. Their parents, having to leave home, being taken by these people - all of it, and now she and Pietro were separated and caged like animals and, and…

“Wanda!” Pietro screams inches above her face. Her eyes open and she blinks drowsily at him. The last tendrils of the memory swirl around her mind, and for a moment, she doesn’t know where she is. Pietro’s eyes are filled with tears and his face is covered in dust. It’s only when her eyes drift to his hair, his white hair, that she remembers. Hydra, Clint, the metal man, how it had fired at her and - 

“Pietro! Are you hurt?” she asks, gasping as a sharp pain rattles her head when she tries to sit up. Pietro makes a strange sound that’s part laugh, part sob. He takes her face gently in his hands and rubs the pads of his thumbs across her cheeks. “What happened?” she asks, holding onto Pietro’s arms and slowly pulling herself into a sitting position. 

Pietro opens his mouth to speak, but another voice cuts in, “We’ve gotta move, guys. That thing's still back there.” Clint’s clutching a phone in his hand, his face somber. His gaze flits from Pietro’s face to her own, before settling back onto his phone. His brow furrows as he presses his thumbs against the buttons.

Wanda’s head spins as she stands up, but Pietro keeps a tight hold on her. The three of them start to walk further down the street. Clint inspects his remaining arrows, occasionally glancing at his phone, as Pietro explains to Wanda, “The robot, the one that looks like Iron Man, attacked us. You jumped on my back and I grabbed Barton – ”

“Thanks for that, by the way,” Clint says.

“ – But I’ve never had to carry two people before and – ” Pietro cuts himself off, a pained look crossing his face. Clint mutters something about being dragged, not carried. It registers faintly in the back of Wanda’s head, but she’s too concerned with Pietro to pay Clint much attention.

“Pietro?” she says. The rest of the question dies on her lips when Pietro dips his head down, his messy curls shadowing his eyes. 

“You fell,” he blurts out. “I was going too fast, and you slipped off my back. I couldn’t catch you in time, and you hit your head. I-I thought – ”

“I’m fine,” Wanda sighs, reaching up to feel the tender bump hidden under her sweaty hair. 

“I tried to check you out, but your brother threatened to bite my hand off. You alright?” Clint asks.

“I’m fine,” she repeats. She smoothes out the creases on Pietro’s forehead, wishing she could make them disappear for good. Her hand freezes as another whining sound makes the air tremble. “What – ”

“Get down!” Clint yells. 

The three of them scramble out of the way just before the ground between them explodes, large chunks of pavement flying up then cascading around them. Wanda and Pietro dive between two buildings, Pietro twisting in time to take the brunt of the impact. He hisses as they skid across the ground.

“Are you okay?” Wanda asks as she pushes herself off him.

“Fine,” he says, his voice rough. “Where’s Barton?” 

On cue, Clint staggers toward them, his right arm bloody and his lip split. “I’m gonna dismantle that futzing robot,” he says, tugging at his torn coat. “And then I’m gonna kill Stark because I know he had something to do with this and he’s not picking up his damn phone.” 

“Shut up,” Pietro says sharply, his eyes scanning their surroundings. The police arrived sometime after the metal man did. Their cars line the outer edges of the area and uniformed men and women guide civilians out in groups. Wanda’s heart clenches when she sees several police officers on the ground, their bodies still. Pietro turns back to Clint, his face somber, and asks, “Do you know what that thing is? Is there a person inside it like Iron Man or is someone controlling it from the outside?” 

Clint falters. “I-I don’t know. I mean, I know someone who might but he’s not answering my calls.” 

Pietro rolls his eyes and says, “That is hardly surprising. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to speak to you.”

Clint’s passive face flickers with hurt before being replaced by annoyance. Sensing that Clint’s patience has run out, Wanda cuts in before he they can argue. “Pietro, stop. Clint, please try calling your friend again. If he answers, ask him if he knows how we can stop the metal man.”

“We?” Clint and Pietro echo. Wanda keeps her eyes on Clint as she touches Pietro’s arm in warning.

“The three of us,” she says. Clint’s eyebrows inch toward his hairline. Wanda knows what she wants to say to him, what he needs to hear - that she and Pietro won’t abandon him, that they both understand what it’s like to have the scepter scrambling their minds, that they’ll fight at his side – but her German fails her. She flounders for the right words, waving her hands around and shaking her head in frustration when another blast in the distance reminds her that they don’t have time. She squeezes Clint’s shoulder between her fingers and simply says, “We are with you.”

Clint’s eyes widen and soften with vulnerability as he looks at her. He bites his lips and his gaze shifts uneasily to Pietro, waiting for him to say something, to scoff, to roll his eyes, anything, but he stays quiet. 

“Pietro – ” Wanda starts, ready to remind him of the day the stopped the bank robbery, that there isn’t any point in having their abilities if they won’t be used to help others, but he stops her.

“No,” he says, his eyes never leaving hers. Her heart sinks until he adds, “You don’t have to say anything, Wanda. We can't abandon the people of this city. I just…just be careful. Please.” 

Wanda’s heart swells at her brother’s words, and her voice trembles as she says, “You be careful, too.”

They look at each other for a quiet moment before they turn twin smiles at Clint, their eyes widened in expectation.

“Um, I didn’t understand any of that,” he says, “You guys weren’t speaking German. I think.”

“Oh, sorry,” Wanda says, “We were saying that we will join you in fighting the angry metal man.”

“That’s, uh, great. First thing we’ve got do is get Stark – Iron Man – on the phone. I’m going to try to call him one more time. Meanwhile, you two help the police get civilians as far away from here as you can. We don’t know what kind of damage that thing can do. Better play it safe,” Clint says as he takes out his phone. His fingers are sliding over the buttons when the phone is shot out of his hand. 

“What the fu – ” All three of them dive out of the way as the metal figure hovers over them and fires several more times, red beams blasting from its palms. It lands with a grace that no one made out of metal should possess. Clint crouches low and dodges the blasts, trying to get to his phone. He curses loudly in English as he cuts his hands on the jagged edges of the destroyed pavement. When he finally wraps his hands around the device, the charred remains disintegrate in his hands. “Aww, phone, no.” 

The robot flies right toward Clint, its metal body whirring and glowing red and he prepares for another attack.

“Clint!” Wanda yells in warning. She tries to run toward him, but Pietro holds her back. 

The figure stands tall, its metal chest only inches away from Clint’s face. Wanda sees Clint’s hand twitch toward his bow.

The air hangs heavy and thick, the summer heat stifling them. Beads of sweat trickle down Wanda’s face, but she makes no move to wipe them away. Even Pietro is quiet next to her, his breaths shallow, as if he were afraid one loud sigh would break the spell. 

It’s the robot who speaks first. “Clint Barton,” is all it says, its voice hollow and metallic, and yet strangely, impossibly amused. 

“Uh, yeah. That’s me,” Clint says, his hand drifting closer to his quiver. Half-hidden behind the overturned car, Wanda’s palms flare pink and red, and Pietro’s legs tense, ready to sprint after Clint.

The robot’s head tilts as he looks at Clint through glowing eyes. “Clinton Francis Barton; alias: Hawkeye. Affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers Initiative; compromised during the Battle of New York.”

Clint’s jaw clenches at that, and he forces himself to stand taller. “Who’s controlling you?” he asks. “Is it Hydra? Strucker?”

The metal figure is quiet for almost an entire minute. If it weren’t for the persistent red glow emitting from its eyes and mouth, Wanda would be sure that it had been turned off. The tension, aided by the unbearable heat, increases with every second that ticks by. 

When it finally speaks, Pietro is so surprised, he jumps and almost runs toward the two still figures. Only Wanda’s steadying hand on his shoulder stops him. 

“No one controls me,” the robot says. Its voice, the calm danger in it, reminds her of Strucker and the quiet way he always spoke. Wanda shivers despite the heat.

Clint raises his chin and squints his eyes at the robot. “You came when they called, didn’t you?”

“The idiot is going to get himself killed,” Pietro whispers to Wanda. The metal figure swivels and looks straight at Wanda and Pietro. “Shit.”

“Shh,” Wanda says, standing up and twitches her fingers, the lights burning brighter in her palms. Pietro’s hands brush against her jacket as he moves closer to her. 

“I was sent to kill you,” the robot says, its voice almost casual. Wanda feels something cold wash through her. “Hydra wishes you dead. They think I will obey them.” The hard metal of its face doesn’t move, but Wanda is sure that the robot is sneering at them. She and Pietro exchange nervous glances. “I, however, have no interest in serving humans.”

“So, uh, why are you here?” Clint asks, drawing the robot’s attention away from Wanda and Pietro.

“To introduce myself, of course,” it says. “I am Ultron. My father created me to replace him after he retired from being Iron Man – ”

“Your father,” Clint sputters. “Uh, sorry,” he adds when Ultron makes whirring noises at him. 

Pietro squeezes her hand and whispers, “Now.” 

They run simultaneously, Pietro racing at lightning speed toward Clint, while Wanda sprints around them . She throws two brilliant spheres at Ultron’s back, leaps over the fallen debris, and hides behind the remains of a large car, her back aching as she crashes against hard metal.

Clint fires his arrows at Ultron’s joints as Pietro carries him out of Ultron’s reach. Wanda peers around the front end of the car, and launches more spheres. One of them makes him stumble, his metal limbs swinging until he regains his balance. Wanda throws another sphere, hoping to catch him off-guard and knock him down completely.

“Enough!” Ultron yells, and fires several blasts in every direction. Only Pietro’s incredible speed keeps them from getting hit. As they run past the car, Clint reaches out and grabs Wanda’s waist, holding her tight against him as they move out of Ultron’s path. Pietro stumbles from the weight of them both, and they skid to a stop by a nearby building, Clint crashing against the wall. 

“Are you alright?” Pietro asks Wanda as she disentangles herself from Clint.

“Yes, yes. You?” Wanda asks him. Pietro nods.

“I’m fine, too. Thanks for asking,” Clint grumbles, rubbing his right shoulder. Pietro scoffs at him, but Wanda pats his arm in apology. 

The sound of rolling thunder fills the air, and her head snaps up, half-expecting to see a whole fleet of Ultrons flying their way.

“I swear if a Thor clone shows up, I’m gonna – ” Clint trails off as the buildings around them start shaking, cracks running up the exterior walls and bits of plaster falling at their feet. “Never mind.”

Another one of Ultron’s beams hits the building directly behind them, and the rumbling sounds increase as the building starts to fall apart. The police officers who had been evacuating the building fall back.

“Pietro, run around Ultron, distract him while Wanda and I get everyone out,” Clint says. His voice is sharp and leaves no room for argument. Pietro shoots Wanda a look, his forehead creased in worry, before he disappears in a blue-and-white blur.

The street floods with panicking people as they race out of the buildings and away from Ultron. One of the police officers runs into the fight and fires her gun at Ultron, the bullet ricocheting off his metal body. Between Pietro and the police, Ultron is distracted enough for Wanda and Clint to run into the crumbling building. Some of the remaining police offers look at Wanda and Clint with suspicion, but they don’t say anything, not when they see them pushing through rubble and bricks to clear a path for people to get out.

“We need to get everyone out before it falls. And we have to do it fast. I don’t know how long your brother’s going to be able to distract shell-head over there.”

Rubble and a large part of the front section of the building has collapsed, blocking the only exit on that side. Wanda hears the frightened screams of the people trapped inside. Her hands shake as she and Clint clear the rubble as fast as they can, the rough stones and the glass cutting up her palms, until there’s a gap wide enough for people to fit through. Together, Wanda and Clint guide the frightened people out of the building and down the steps onto the street. An older man carrying a red briefcase trips on the steps, but Wanda reaches out and catches him just in time. 

There are still a handful of people inside when the building’s foundations starts to give out. Wanda is inside helping an injured man when she hears Clint scream her name. She reacts instinctively and throws her arms over her head. Her eyes are shut as she waits to be crushed, but nothing happens. The rumbling slowly comes to a stop. She opens her eyes, half-expecting to find that Pietro has saved her again, but instead finds that not only are her hands alight but that the entire building is encased in soft pink energy. 

A nauseating mix of terror and awe course through her as she realizes that she’s keeping the building up. She grits her teeth and tries to keep the light around the building steady, her arms aching from the strain.

“Out! Everyone out!” Clint shouts in English. It doesn’t matter if anyone speaks the language; they all know what he’s saying.

When the last few people have staggered out, Clint runs to the base of the stairs, his eyes wide and panicked.

“Wanda?”

“I-I don’t know how to –” 

“Just let go and jump.” Wanda starts shaking her head, but Clint cuts in, “Trust me.”

Her hands are on fire and she’s certain that the building will collapse onto top of her at any moment, but she still freezes at his words. She and Pietro had trusted that woman, the one that had used their desperation to trick them. Wanda had learned not to trust anyone other than her brother, and now Clint was asking her to trust him, to put her life in his hands. 

She tears her eyes away from the cracked, crumbling ceiling and looks at his face. She sees the same shadows that she sees in Pietro’s face, the same lines, the same heaviness that weighs on her own shoulders. 

In the distance, Pietro darts around Ultron, moving away just before a red beam hits him. The ground is in pieces, making it harder for Pietro to run across. Wanda turns back to Clint and gives me the smallest of nods. 

Clint counts for her. 

One.

Two.

Three.

Wanda drops her arms and launches herself across the stairs. Clint catches her with one arm, the other coming up to cover her head. They fall on the ground, the torn up pavement keeping them from skidding too far. 

Pietro appears next to them, his face livid. “What the hell was that?” 

Wanda wipes the blood from her hands, wincing as she catches sight of the large tears in her tights. “Nothing,” she says, “We’re both fine.” Pietro’s nostrils flare and he pivots toward Clint, who raises his palms and takes a step back. 

“Whoa, I was just – ”

A shrill scream draws their attention. “Pietro!” Clint says and points down the street to where Ultron is. Two children – a boy and a girl – are huddled together, staring up at Ultron with wide eyes. Pietro doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t make any faces at Clint or argue, just turns on his heel and speeds toward the children, the earlier conflict forgotten.

He’s forced to dodge Ultron’s relentless assault, and it takes him longer than it normally would to get to the children. He finds an opening, and his hand stretches out to grab the kids when one of Ultron’s blasts manages to hit him. He falls face down on the ground.

Wanda screams. She screams and screams, just like she did they day Hydra caught them, the day she and Pietro were separated and caged. A surge of red energy bursts from her body, tearing through everything around her. She hears Clint’s strangled cry as he’s knocked down, but she doesn’t apologize. She can’t think of anything except Pietro’s still body. Everything goes silent around her, her ragged breaths the only sound as she runs toward him. 

Inhale.

Step, step.

Exhale.

Step, step.

Gasp.

Step.

Gasp.

Step.

She falls to her knees next to Pietro, holds onto his shoulder and turns him over. Her shaking hands grab fistfuls of his shirt – the one she’d bought for him only a few days earlier – and shakes him again and again, screaming his name. 

“Pietro, Pietro, wake up,” she chokes out, her tears falling into his chest. 

Her hands burn red against his shirt and he gasps awake, coughing and groaning, her name on his lips. “Wanda?” He hisses and touches his ribs.

“I saw you get hit. I thought you were dead,” she screams, her voice verging on hysterical.

“It – Ultron – he – he only grazed me. Fast healing,” he says, tripping over his words, his eyes unfocused and dazed.

Wanda wants to tell him to leave, to wait somewhere safe until she and Clint have taken care of Ultron, but Clint yells at them from a distance as he runs toward two small figures huddled next to a large garbage bin. Pietro slowly gets up and tries to run, but his legs gives out, and Wanda has to put her arms around his waist to keep him upright. 

Ultron swipes his arm smoothly and knocks Clint and the garbage bin aside. Clint hits a brick wall and slumps to the ground, leaving the children alone and trapped between the wall and Ultron. The girl, the older of the two, holds the boy close to her and they bow their heads. 

Wanda throws a sphere toward Ultron, but she’s too far away and it fades out before it reaches him. The now-familiar sound of Ultron’s mechanisms whirring sends her heart to her throat. She runs with Pietro limping at her side toward the children, her legs burning with effort. Ultron raises his hands to attack, the red light glowing brighter as his repulsors charge, when a large, flat disk hits his back, drawing his attention away from the children. The disk spins away and a man dressed all in blue catches it mid-sprint. 

Ultron turns around, and the disk flies in again, but Ultron catches it and hurls it back to its owner, the force of it almost knocking down the man in blue. He holds his ground, and attacks Ultron with a dizzying series of kicks and flips. Clint, who’s managed to pull himself up, uses the distraction to get to the children. Wanda leaves Pietro leaning against a car while she runs toward them. 

She keeps one glowing hand up as the four of them walk past the school’s ruins, the children’s eyes widening as they take in the destroyed building. Clint tries to ask them where their parents are, if they know where to go, but he doesn’t speak any Serbian and the children don’t speak English, German, or Russian. Clint looks helplessly at Wanda. 

She lowers herself to the ground, pausing for a second before she placing her hand on the girl’s shoulder. She almost expects the girl to flinch away from her, and is warmly surprised when she leans closer. Wanda asks her in Transian if she knows where her parents are, but she only receives confused looks.

A police officer runs into the street to meet them, his eyes wide and darting from them to Ultron and back. His speaks to the children in Serbian and gestures for them to follow him. The girl looks over her shoulder at Wanda and Clint as they leave.

“Sorry about hitting you earlier,” Wanda says as the run back towards Ultron. Her feet are sweaty and sore in the heavy boots, and her hair keeps falling into her eyes. She ignores her discomfort and glances at Clint out of the corner of her eyes. 

“ ‘S okay,” Clint says, “It was rougher than the last time, but I get it. Just aim it at the scary talking robot next time.” 

Wanda’s eyes are on Clint’s face as he talks, so she sees his reaction when he recognizes the man in blue. A relieved, exhausted grin stretches itself across his face, making the shadows and lines on Clint’s face shrink.

“Cap!” he yells over the clashing sounds of metal hitting metal. 

The man in blue flips over Ultron and briefly glances away from the fight. He waves at Clint with one hand as the other throws the disk again. 

An answering red blast bursts from Ultron’s mouth. The man in blue jumps out of the way, catches his disk, and braces himself for the following hit, but Pietro runs in and pushes the man out of the way before the beam touches metal. Even from the distance, Wanda sees Pietro’s grimace as he holds his ribs. 

Wanda and Clint attack Ultron with a volley of spheres and arrows, distracting him long enough to get to Pietro and the other man. 

“Are you hurt?” she asks Pietro, worry eating away at her as she takes in his tired face, but he just waves away her concern and nods toward the others. 

Clint and the man in blue talk quickly in English, the man occasionally looking toward her and Piero, his eyebrow raised. After a few more seconds, they both turn to them. The serious look on the man’s half-hidden face sends a thrum of nerves through her. 

“Clint says you have abilities,” he says in perfect German. Pietro doesn’t answer, just stares at the man’s helmet with a look of open disdain.

“Yes, we do,” Wanda says carefully. Clint knows the man, and even though he has helped them, Wanda and Pietro don’t know who he is or what he wants. 

When neither she nor Pietro say anything more, Clint adds, “Pietro runs fast, and Wanda makes freaky stuff happen. We don’t really understand what it is yet, but it’s pretty awesome.” Clint answers in his own spotty German, and Wanda feels a wave of affection for him. She knows Clint and his friend can communicate better in English but they chose German so that she and Pietro could understand. 

“Alright then.” The man holds out a hand to them, but another explosion cuts their introduction short.

Energy pulses steadily in Wanda’s glowing hands as she calmly raises them, ready to throw more spheres when Ultron gets closer. The man’s steady gaze rests on her hands for a second before he turns back to Ultron, who’s busied himself with tearing apart the streets and buildings with his repulsors.

“Hydra get a hold of Stark’s tech?” the man asks Clint.

“How’d you know he’s Hydra?” 

“Call it a hunch.”

“Yeah, well, Hydra didn’t make him.” 

“Him?”

“His name’s Ultron. Says Tony created him, but Hydra tried to control him. Turned into a real boy and decided he didn’t like being told what to do. I don’t know, it’s like a fucking Greek tragedy or something.”

“You try calling Stark yet?” the man in blue asks. Wanda’s eyes widen at the innocuous statement, and she takes a step closer to Clint. 

Clint shoulders tense before he says, “Have I – called – _I have been calling all of you for_ – you know what, no. We don’t have time for this now.” He takes a deep breath. “What are we going to do about Ultron?” 

“Keep him off-balance until we can shut him off.” The man stands taller as he looks around the wrecked street. “Clint, get up high, try finding a weak spot in his armor. The police are doing their best, but there are still a few people left behind. Wanda, do you think you get them and any other stray civilians off the street?” Wanda nods. “Good. You and Clint can work from a distance so stay back. Pietro and I will keep Ultron focused on us.” 

The man signals to Pietro, picks up his colorful disk – shield, Wanda realizes - and runs into the open street, jumping over cars and rubble with more ease than should be possible for a man of his size.

Pietro crosses his arms and makes an irritated in the back of his throat. “Why should we listen to him?” he asks. 

“Because he’s Captain America,” Clint answers with a grin before he fires an arrow that has a cable attached to it and swings away onto the building’s roof. 

“We’re in Serbia,” Pietro snorts and shakes his head at Clint’s disappearing form, but his face turns serious when he looks at Wanda. “Be careful,” he says, looking like he wants to say more. 

“You, too,” she answers, her voice almost at a whisper. Pietro takes a step toward her, but stops, smiles tightly at her, and runs toward Ultron. Her chest feels like it’s in a vice. It only grows as she watches Pietro run slower than normal. She has to close her eyes and take a few deep breaths to bite back the growing terror. She shakes her stiff wrists out and moves along the sidelines of the fight, her eyes darting between Ultron and the surrounding areas. Most of the civilians have escaped, but she peers into every alley, building, and crevice, just in case. 

Every so often, an arrow will rain down and hit Ultron in strategic locations – the juncture between his arm and torso, behind his knee, an eye socket – but they just bounce off of his armor.

Wanda creeps closer and focuses on the energy running through her veins, allowing it to pool in her hands until a shinning red sphere blossoms in her palm. She’s done this so often lately that it takes almost no effort. 

The sphere hovers above her palm as she toes over the rubble and torn up pavement. She waits until Pietro catches her eye and darts away from Ultron to throw the sphere. It makes contact with Ultron’s metal chest, but all it does is get his attention. He takes a step toward her. She hears Clint and Pietro’s warning shouts, but she just throws another sphere, this time at his head. She doesn’t know what she’d hoped her spheres would do to him, but it’s disappointing for them to have no effect nonetheless. 

Clint lands next to her in a crouch. He straightens himself and climbs onto the hood of a car. 

“What are you doing?” Wanda asks him.

He squints over the dust floating in the air. “Trying to figure out how to pierce Ultron’s armor. I’m almost out of arrows again. These,” he says pointing to a bundle with odd flints, “Are reinforced to be able to get through most metals, but they’re not even making a dent. Tony must have used that special metal from Wakanda, Ada-something.”

“My spheres aren’t doing anything, either. I almost made him lose his footing earlier, but nothing since then.” 

“Your brother looks good,” Clint says, pointing to where Pietro is darting around Ultron, his body blurring as he moves at increasing speed. Something loosens in Wanda’s chest as she sees Pietro move with greater ease. Whatever injuries he sustained from Ultron’s blast seem to have healed. Ultron moves fast, faster than she, Clint, or even the agile Captain, but his speed doesn’t compare to Pietro’s. 

The captain shouts instructions to him, and Pietro, to Wanda’s surprise, doesn’t argue, just stops running long enough to listen to the Captain before he darts off again. There’s a small fire growing near one of the cars. Pietro runs in circles around the fire, faster and faster until all the oxygen is sucked out of the vacuum and the fire dies. 

“Yeah, he does,” Wanda finally says, her eyes on the blue-and-white blur.

She and Clint both jump when they hear a shrill scream coming from one of the buildings they thought was empty. A woman limps out, and almost falls into Wanda’s arms. She speaks to her in rapid Serbian, and points behind her. Wanda tries to calm her as Clint moves closer. 

Men dressed all in black run out of the building, their arms loaded with the same strange weapons that Pietro had ripped from their arms just a few hours earlier. 

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Clint says. The Hydra agents that had been left behind point their weapons at the three of them. “Go, get her out of here. I’ll cover you.” 

Wanda turns away as soon as Clint starts shooting. She doesn’t want to see where Clint’s arrows land.

The trembling woman tugs at Wanda’s jacket and points toward Ultron, who’s firing at the police officers. The Captain tries to draw his attention with his shield, but Ultron either doesn’t notice or he doesn’t care. The woman speaks quickly and gestures with her hands, but Wanda doesn’t know a word of Serbian, not even a simple hello. 

Wanda doesn’t know what to do. Her hands hover in the air until she slowly puts her arm around the woman’s shoulder. The shorter woman’s gaze snaps to her, and Wanda holds her breath, half-expecting to be shoved away, but instead the woman’s face crumbles and she raises her hands to cover her tears. 

“It’s going to be okay,” Wanda tells her, even though she knows the woman won’t understand her words. She keeps her arm around her as she guides her off the street and to a waiting police officer. 

The officer stares her down for a few second before nodding his head in the direction of the fight. Wanda turns to leave when she feels someone grab her hand. She spins around, sure that the officer has changed his mind. Her palm flickers red, but the light vanishes when she sees its the woman who’s pressing her hand to Wanda’s. She says a few more words in Serbian and her lips creep up in a weary approximation of a smile. 

‘Thank you’ is understandable in any language.

Wanda’s heart thuds wildly as she runs back to the others. She doesn’t let her hands glow until she’s almost at Clint’s side. She doesn’t want to give the woman a reason to fear her. 

Clint’s eyes widen and yells at her in English, but the only word she understands is her name. He raises his bow, and she spins around just in time to see a Hydra agent heft a heavy-looking weapon into his arms and point it at her.

Her fingers curl instinctively and brilliant red-pink light bursts from her palm. The gun misfires, and the man falls back, an arrow sticking out of his shoulder. 

“How’re you holding up?” Clint asks, his voice tense. More cuts litter his face and his long coat is torn in several places. He grimaces as he peels the ruined garment off and tosses it aside.

“Fine,” she lies. She’s been using her powers all morning and even though she’s kept the spheres relatively small, it’s starting to take a toll on her. “You?” 

Clint shoots her a grateful smile and says, “I’m good.” A little blood bubbles out of the cut on his lip and he looks almost as tired as she feels, but she believes him when he raises his bow and shoots another arrow without taking his eyes off her. 

They stand side-by-side, fighting off the last few Hydra agents and occasionally running over to help Pietro and the Captain, who continue their relentless assault on Ultron.

There’s a moment during the fight that stays with Wanda, that makes her feel like maybe she’s doing the right thing, like she’s found where she belongs, where she is no longer the outcast she and her brother, her parents, her people, have always been. 

Clint’s eyes are on Ultron as he reaches back to take an arrow from his quiver. Out of the corner of her eye, Wanda sees two figures in black creep toward them. She moves fluidly, easily, drops to one knee and flings her arm out, a brilliant red-pink orb flying from her hand. It crashes into the two approaching Hydra agents and sends them reeling back. 

“Whoa. Nice one,” Clint says appreciatively. Wanda jumps to her feet feeling lighter than she has in days. 

“Thanks,” she says with a smile. That sense of belonging only grows when the police officers arrive with handcuffs for the unconscious Hydra agents. 

There’s a _whooshing_ sound as Pietro runs past them. “A little help would be nice!” he screams as he doubles back around. Wanda and Clint follow him to where the Captain is trading blows with Ultron.

From the distance, Wanda hears the Captain ask, “Why are you doing this?” 

Ultron, who has his hand raised to fire once more, pauses, his interior mechanisms whirring as he processes the question. “Is it not obvious?” he asks, a strange undertone in his robotic voice. “I was made by liars and murderers. My father created me to protect humanity, to take his place, but he made his fortune through wars. He created weapons to kill people, and now he creates another to help protect them? It's laughable.”

"Didn't know robots could laugh," Clint says under his breath. 

The Captain's voice rings loud as he says, “People change. Stark’s just trying to make up for his mistakes.”

“But don’t you see, Captain, it is humanity itself that is the problem. You expend all your energies trying to conquer or kill one another. Hydra infected Stark’s computer system in the hopes of using it, _me_ , to help them rule your world. You are a soldier, created to win one of your world’s most terrible wars; Barton is an assassin; the Maximoffs are thieves. Am I expected to simply obey you all, to serve your every whim, to defend you when you are the root of the issue? My actions here are not out of vendetta or resentment, but necessity. The world will be cleansed, Captain. The future lies not with fragile, self-serving flesh but with incorruptible metal.”

The four of them listen to Ultron’s speech in silence, neither of them moving or even being able to look away from his face, as if his hollow voice had cast a spell over them to keep them mesmerized. 

The Captain snaps out of it first, stepping forward to try to reason with Ultron, but Wanda doesn’t pay attention. In the back of her mind, she’s aware the sounds of a fight breaking out - the clamor of metal clashing, the _whoosh_ as Pietro runs around them, the dull thud of Clint’s arrows as they connect with armor - but she’s trapped inside her own thoughts, frozen as Ultron’s words echo in her head.

Long before Hydra had taken them, Wanda and Pietro were already aware of how cruel people could be. They’d lost their parents when they were teenagers, and had been forced to flee, to spend years moving from one place to another, never knowing when their next meal would be or where they would find a place to rest. They were just two skinny Roma kids trying to survive, but they were treated like vermin.

Memories of her time spent as Hydra’s prisoner creep like shadows in her head, and a soft voice, one that sounds frighteningly like Strucker’s, whispers that maybe Ultron is right. Why should they protect anyone when they themselves have been so mistreated? 

She shivers even though the sun is mercilessly beating down on her, and pulls her jacket tighter around her. She bows her head, dark hair falling and blocking her vision, and remembers the people that had turned on her and Pietro after they stopped the bank robbery, the fear, the anger, the mistrust. 

But Wanda remembers other faces: the kind woman who had given her directions and a flower, the man in the subway station who had smiled at her, the women from the club who’d come to her defense, the police officers who'd seen what she could do and had still trusted her to help them. 

She thinks of the brave Captain, who accepted them and their impossible abilities without question.

She thinks of Clint, who risked his life again and again for two strangers and asked for nothing in return.

She thinks of Pietro, who even afraid and hurt and embittered and exhausted ran into a bank for the same people who later turned on him, how he chose to help Clint, how he stayed with her throughout the years, how he carried her in his arms out of the prison. 

A mighty crash rips her away from her thoughts and forces her to concentrate on the battle going on around her. Ultron’s firing at a large building, the steady stream of energy weakening its foundations until it crumbles and falls. Dust and rubble rain down on them, and they have to run to not get crushed by the falling debris. 

The captain leaps over a car, twists in the air and lands on Ultron’s shoulders. His hands scramble across smooth metal, looking for a break in the plates. Clint fires an arrow mid-jump, as the Captain slams his shield across Ultron’s face. Ultron catches the arrow between his metal fingers and snaps it in half. He swats the Captain off him.

Wanda steps forward and tilts her head back to look into Ultron’s glowing red eyes. 

“Wanda, what are you doing?” Pietro yells over the clashing, clanging sounds of the fight. He tries to pull her back, but she turns around and looks at him, silently asking him to let her go. His eyes dart from her to Ultron, his brow furrowed, but relents with a hesitant nod. 

A light breeze pushes her hair away from her forehead as she spins around. 

“We are like you, my brother and I,” she says. Her legs tremble slightly as Ultron stares impassively at her, but she swallows and keeps going. “Hydra tried to make us into weapons. They tried to use us, control us just like they did with you.” 

She pauses to tries to gather her words, and glances back to the others. Clint’s watching them warily, his last arrow stung loosely in his bow, and Pietro’s tense, ready to run in after her at any second, but it’s the look on the Captain’s face that surprises her. Even with his helmet on, she sees the anger, worry, and the shadow of something else, something unspeakably sad written in the curve of his mouth and the grim determination in his eyes. 

She turns back to Ultron, and says, “We understand what you feel, how horrible it is for someone to try to control your thoughts. There are -” She cuts herself off and breathes slowly, shakily. “There are bad people, people like Strucker, like the rest of Hydra. But there are good people, too. It isn’t right to kill everyone just because there are some…” Her voice trails off. She’s been speaking German the whole time, and she knows what she wants to say, but the words slip away from her, her thoughts too muddled and her heart beating too fast to keep the languages straight. She wonders if Ultron understands Transian or any Romani. 

“Come with us,” the Captain says, stepping forward. He lowers his shield to the ground in an offer of truce. “You won’t have to follow any more orders. We can offer you a life, a home. You won’t be treated like an object or ordered around.” Ultron’s fist clenches as the Captain strikes a nerve with his words.

The explosive battleground is quiet for several long moments before Ultron speaks. “You offer me a chance at redemption even after I have destroyed your city,” he says. His unusually expressive voice has gone stiff and empty. He makes a strange grinding sound that Wanda realizes is his version of a laugh. “How very… _human_.” 

Ultron swivels his head toward Wanda and fires at her, his movements so fast neither she or the Captain have any time to react. The heat of the beam caresses her face for an instant, but she blinks as is on the other side of the street by the time the blast explodes on the ground. 

“You do enjoy frightening me, don’t you,” Pietro says without letting go of her. Her head drops onto his shoulder and she breathes deeply for several long seconds, trying to calm her racing heart. 

“I had to try,” she finally says. 

“I know. It was foolish trying to reason with a machine, but I know. I suppose you’ll want to go back?” His voice is exasperated, but his lips quirk with fondness. Wanda nods. “Hang on.” She closes her eyes and they’re back at Clint and the Captain’s side in under two seconds.

“Well that was a bust,” Clint says when Wanda hops out of Pietro’s arms. “So what do we now?”

“He has to have a weak spot. We just have to keep fighting until we find it,” the Captain says. 

“Or what, hope that his system malfunctions,” Clint says sarcastically. The captain shrugs and hefts his shield up. Clint snorts. “Yeah, what are the odds of that happening?” 

Wanda freezes. Her heart flutters in her chest as her mind races over Clint’s words. Odds. Something clicks in her brain, like the missing piece of the puzzle has fallen into place and she can finally see the complete picture. She swivels to Pietro, and isn’t surprised to see the same understanding written on his face. 

“You guys okay? You’re doing that weird twin thing again.”

Odds. Chances. _Probability_. 

She’s been making improbable things happen the whole time – light bulbs exploding, guns misfiring, electric doors unlocking, files being erased from computers. She can change the odds of something happening, manipulate probability to do whatever she wants. It's more than that, she knows. The chaos she can weave is more than just simple probability, but they're related. She's sure of it. 

Ultron’s armor has protected him from her powers, but if she creates more focused spheres, ones concentrated exactly on what she wants to happen instead of vaguely creating bad luck for him, it might be enough to get through his tough exterior and into his more vulnerable internal mechanisms.

“Wanda?”

“I know my power is,” she says hurriedly, "Or at least what part of it." 

“That’s, uh, great, Wanda, but now’s not really the time for – ”

“No, you don’t understand. It’s probability. I think I can increase the chances of Ultron’s system malfunctioning,” say says. Clint’s raises his eyebrow and looks doubtful, so she adds, “Before, I just was just throwing the spheres and hoping something would happen –”

“But if you make one specifically targeted at causing his insides to go haywire, you might be able to turn him off long enough for us to take him apart,” Clint finishes, still looking like he’s unsure. He turns to the Captain. He, Wanda, and even Pietro wait for his reaction. 

The captain keeps a steady gaze on Wanda for several moments before he nods. “Do it. We’ll buy you time.” He claps Clint’s shoulder and the two of them jump into action, the shield and an arrow flying through the air.

Pietro takes her hand. 

The spark thrums in her chest, burning bright and hot, and the red energy pours outward, sliding through her veins and pooling in her free hand. Strands of it twine along her fingers, pulsing and glowing. She curls her fingers until the threads condense into a small sphere. Tendrils of energy grow out of it and encircle the orb, her hand, and the air around it. 

Pietro’s hand is warm and steady in hers. She starts to look away from the hex when she hears the Captain shout, but Pietro squeezes her hand. 

Wanda breathes and holds her palm up. The red light bleeds into pink as it grows bigger and denser, forcing Pietro to reluctantly let go so she can use both hands. She cradles the energy between her palms, and concentrates on the likelihood that Ultron’s interior system will short circuit. As she increases the probability of it happening, the strain of it wears at her and her knees start to buckle.

The familiar weight of Pietro’s hands on her shoulders steadies her. His hands start to shake and the vibrations race down her arms and into her hands. The lights grow bigger and brighter until she feels it stabilize. 

Probability, she’s holding probability in the palms of her hands, and it’s beautiful and bright and shining. And dangerous and _terrifying_. She doesn’t want to think what could have happened if Hydra had succeeded in controlling her. 

The whine of Ultron’s repulsors charging draws her attention away from the shimmering energy. 

“Clint!” the Captain shouts. He jumps over a large pile of rubble and holds his shield up to cover Clint and himself. Ultron’s beam is steady as it collides with the shield, and Wanda feels a stab of fear for them. 

“Wanda, it has to be now,” Pietro says quietly. 

She nods her head, flicking the hair out of her eyes, and throws the sphere. Pink light collides with silver metal, spreads out and cages Ultron in a thin coat of light. It seeps into him and disappears. Wanda’s heart drops, sure that it didn’t work. 

“What – ”

“Wait, look,” Pietro says. 

Ultron’s limbs jerk and loud, screeching, clanging, whirring noises erupt from him as Wanda’s hex causes his system to malfunction. He tries to say something but his voice is garbled. He slows down until he goes silent, and the bright red-orange light from his eyes and mouth dims. 

The metal shell clatters to the ground. 

The captain is the first one to react. “We have to try to take him apart before he reboots,” he says, helping Clint to his feet. They only manage to take a handful of steps toward the fallen robot when Ultron’s eyes flare red. He fires at them from the ground a few times before he jumps up and flies into the air. The captain throws his shield and Wanda tries to make another sphere, but her fingers only spark once before the light fades out. She sways, drained from the exertion, and Clint catches her. 

Ultron’s speed increases and he disappears. There’s a thundering _boom_ as Pietro runs after him, moving so fast and so suddenly that the three of them are thrown back from the force of it. 

“Pietro, wait!” the captain calls helplessly after him as they stagger to their feet. Wanda tries to follow her brother, but Clint slings his arm over her shoulder, halting her movement. 

“And there he goes. Great. That’s just great,” he says. He tugs her closer and says in forced cheer, “So, Cap, fancy running into you here of all places. So, what, you just happened to be in the area?”

The captain tears his eyes away from the horizon and looks at Clint. He undoes the strap under his chin and pulls his helmet off. His hair is sweaty, and the parts of his face that were protected by the helmet are pink and shiny. The rest of his skin is darkened by dust and soot. He lets the helmet clatter to the ground and scratches the back of his neck, sighing deeply before meeting Clint’s gaze.

“I was in Kiev for a while, following a lead on Hydra. I got word that they have a base here in Belgrade, and that some of the information might be useful for what I’m after. I’d just gotten here when I heard the commotion.”

Wanda ducks out from under his arm and stands on her tip-toes, trying to catch a glimpse of Pietro somewhere in the distance. 

“What’re you looking for?” Clint asks. She has her back to them, but she can hear the tension in Clint’s voice.

When there isn’t an immediate answer, she turns around, curiosity getting the better of her. The captain has his hands on his hips and his head is tilted to the ground.

“An old friend,” he finally says, his gaze slowly rising to meet Clint’s.

They stare at each other for a long moment, long enough that Wanda wonders if she should say something, but Clint takes a slow breath and nods stiffly. “What are we going to do about Ultron?” 

The captain sighs and looks around the destroyed area. “Stop him, of course, but he’s not our biggest problem. Hydra is. It keeps coming back to Hydra,” he says, a pinched look crossing over his face. He faces her. “You told Ultron that Hydra was responsible for your abilities manifesting? They were planning on using you as weapons?” The captain’s baritone voice roughens as he speaks. 

“Yes,” Wanda says, a knot forming in her throat. An image of her and Pietro, glassy-eyed and dazed carrying out Strucker’s orders makes something tighten in her chest. 

“I’m sorry to ask this, but are there are others like you? We need to know if we have to worry about someone else attacking.”

Wanda feels her face twist in horror. Clint must know what she’s thinking because he cuts in and says, “They took others, tried to do the same thing that they did to Wanda and Pietro, but Strucker said no one else survived the procedures.” He’s quiet for several seconds before he adds, “I haven’t found anyone else, neither have Wanda and Pietro, but we don’t actually know if he was telling the truth or not.”

Wanda has to turn away for a second, her eyes blinking rapidly to try to keep the tears back. The image of lifeless bodies, of people who had been tricked just like she and Pietro had been, flickers in her mind, and a sharp, bitter hatred for Hydra poisons her thoughts. Her nails dig into her palms as she’s overwhelmed by the sudden wish that Clint had killed Strucker, that his arrow had pierced his heart and left him bleeding out on the street. 

The desire vanishes almost immediately. Guilt chokes at her, and she’s left feeling hollow and horrified that she could think something like that. She’d been so upset with Clint when she thought he’d killed Strucker, and now here she was, wishing someone dead. 

She’s startled when the captain says, “Don’t worry. We’re going to take care of it, end Hydra for good.” He turns back to Clint. “We’ll need backup, though. I think it’s time we get the team back together.” He pulls a phone out of a hidden pocket in his uniform, and makes a call. Wanda's eyes flick to Clint when someone answers almost immediately.

Clint’s face twists into a mixture of hurt and anger. The captain looks taken aback for a moment. He says something quietly into the phone and puts it down. 

“Barton?”

Clint explodes and starts yelling at the captain in English. The shadows under his eyes that had receded during the fight grow more and more pronounce with each livid word that falls from his lips. 

Wanda doesn’t understand what he’s saying, but she recognizes some of his words: Natasha, me, _alone_. Something tugs at her heart, a fierce protectiveness over her archer friend. Clint had stayed behind, even when he didn’t understand what was happening or why he was abandoned, he’d stayed behind to help her and Pietro, he’d followed them across countries to keep them safe. 

She tries to move toward Clint, to offer some kind of comfort, but the captain waves her off. She looks away and gives them a moment alone, carefully stepping over chunks of pavement and debris and walking away from the two men. Her eyes drift over the wreckage. She stands in the middle of the street in a daze, the jumbled mess of people shouting in Serbian and the wail of sirens ringing in her ears.

When she glances back, Clint’s head is bowed, his posture hunched and defeated. The captain makes placating gestures, his voice low and calm as he talks to him. Clint eventually looks up. He rubs at his face with bandaged fingers before clapping the captain’s shoulder.

Something in the distance catches Wanda’s eyes – a blurred figure darting through the crowd.

Pietro.

Glass crunches under her boots as she runs toward him. They meet by one of the still-standing buildings, the one they’d been walking by earlier that morning when Hydra attacked. Her arms move of their own accord and go around his neck; His wrap themselves around her waist. They stay that way for a long time. The rest of the world falls away, and there’s only them. Relief, tremendous relief is all she feels. She gasps and tears prickle at her eyes. 

“You shouldn’t have run off like that,” she says, her face buried in his shoulder. She holds him tight, and presses her lips against his shoulder.

“He tried to kill you. I would have dismantled him with my bare hands had I caught him,” he says fiercely.

She sighs and pulls away. “You would have gotten hurt. Again.” Her eyes drift to his side. The shirt there is scorched, but the skin underneath is pale and unscathed. 

He shakes his head, a stray curl falling across his eye. “I’m healing faster now. Because of my speed, I think.” Wanda’s thoughts drift to the way her hands had flashed red before Pietro woke up. She doesn’t know if that was responsible for his quick recovery, or if Pietro’s speed does grant him accelerated healing, but she’s too grateful to dwell on the matter. 

She reaches up to push his hair back from his forehead, her fingers tracing over the row of neat stitches on his forehead. The head wound he had received the night Hydra took him from the hotel room is completely healed. Her fingers move higher and tangle themselves in Pietro’s messy hair. 

Pietro tenses under her touch, and tries to pull away, aware that she’s looking at his hair. 

The white has spread completely. Not a single black strand remains. 

Sometimes, the white hair shocks her and she doesn’t recognize her own brother. She misses the familiar dark curls that their mother always admired, but the white hair, like their abilities, are a part of them now. 

“I like it,” she says. Pietro doesn’t say anything, just stares down at her with a soft look in his eyes, the usual hardness almost entirely gone. 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says, his voice unbearably quiet. A shout is the distance reminds them that there are still pressing matters at hand. “What happens now?” Pietro asks, rubbing a hand over his tired eyes. 

“The captain said that they have a team, and that together they'll deal with Ultron and Strucker.” She pauses for a moment before adding, “He promised that they will stop Hydra for good.” 

Pietro’s nostrils flare. He nods jerkily and says, “Well, that takes care of our problem. Barton and his absurdly-dressed friend will deal with Hydra, and you and I are free to do whatever we want.”

The words tumble out before Wanda has a chance to think about them. “And what is that?” she asks.

“What?” Pietro says.

She hesitates. “What do we want? Where do we go from here?”

“I – I don’t know. Anywhere. What do you want?” 

She looks around for a moment before turning back to Pietro. “I’d like to see Strucker imprisoned and surrounded by a lot of guards.” 

Pietro is serious and quiet as he thinks. “I would like to have words with Iron Man. The incompetent fool nearly cost us our lives.” 

“Guys?” Clint says. Wanda and Pietro looks away from each other and turn to face Clint and the captain.

“How are you, Clint?” Wanda asks, her eyes moving from the him to the captain and back. 

Clint shrugs. There’s a weary acceptance written in his face. “I’ve been better. But, um, sorry about earlier with the yelling and stuff.” Pietro scoffs, but Wanda elbows him and smiles at Clint. “Anyway, this is –” He waves at the captain, who steps forward and holds his hand out to them. 

“Steve Rogers. Sorry we didn’t get a chance to formally meet earlier,” he says, shaking Wanda’s hand. “You two did good today.” 

“Thank you,” Wanda says quickly before Pietro can say anything sarcastic or rude. 

“You guys figure out where you’re gonna go from here?” Clint asks. 

Wanda and Pietro look at each other before nodding. Wanda licks her lips, breathes slowly, and says, “We would like to come with you.”

“What?”

“We want to help you with Ultron and Strucker.” 

Clint and the cap – _Steve_ – trade looks. “I don’t know if that’s such a great idea,” Steve says. “We appreciate what you did here today, but you’re still civilians and things might get dangerous.” 

“You don’t trust us,” Pietro cuts in, his face twisting into that same disinterested look that he uses when he wants to hide that he’s hurt. It’s a look that Wanda hasn’t seen in a long time.

“It isn’t that -”

“I’m not particularly inclined to trust a man dressed like the American flag,” Pietro says. Wanda doesn’t add that Pietro isn’t inclined to trust _anyone_. “But we can help you. It’s personal for us.” 

“It is for me, too,” Steve says quietly. He doesn’t offer any more than that, but his jaw tightens and he looks down. 

“Cap, we could use them against Ultron, and they already know more about Strucker than we do,” Clint says.

Steve looks at them carefully for several long moments. He sighs. “Alright, you can come along.” A thrum of excitement runs through Wanda, and she has to resist the urge to cheer. She pretends not to notice the satisfied look on Pietro’s face. 

“Welcome to the team,” Clint says. 

“Speaking of, I promised to call them back,” Steve says, taking out his phone. His fingers dance on the smooth screen, his eyes flitting from the phone to Clint and back. Clint stands stoic and straight, his face tense as he watches the captain work. 

Steve puts it on speaker and holds it in the palm of his hand so that the four of them can hear. Several voices speak at once until Steve’s resonant baritone cuts in. He motions with his free hand for Clint to speak. 

Clint’s eyes widen and looks frightened for a second, as if afraid that the rest of the team will hang up as soon as they hear his voice. 

“For fuck’s sake, Barton,” Pietro says, “Get on with it.” 

Clint looks up and meets Wanda’s eyes. She gives him an encouraging smile. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows roughly. He moves closer to the phone and says in English, “We’ve got a situation.” Wanda listens carefully and tries to understand his words but they blur together. Clint’s voice gets stronger the longer he talks, even laughing when a woman’s voice says something. After a few minutes, Clint stops talking and nods at Steve.

Steve takes the phone, holds it up to his mouth, and says, his voice both serious and amused, “Avengers assemble.” 

Pietro rolls his eyes and makes a face at Steve. 

Steve and Clint talk quietly to themselves, occasionally gesturing at the wrecked street and the police in the distance. 

“You realize this means we’ll have to learn English?” Pietro says.

“You were the one that insisted we move to America,” Wanda reminds him. Pietro huffs a laugh. A light gust of wind drifts by, carrying the smell of burnt tires and smoke, and blows a few strands of her hair across her face. Wanda flicks the hair back with practiced ease. 

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Pietro says and reaches down to unzip one of the pockets in his pants. “I bought it at the store this morning. I was going to give it to you when we got back, but with everything that happened…” He trails off and hands her a small crumpled cloth. 

It’s a headband, a red headband, almost the exact same scarlet shade as her jacket. 

“It’s beautiful,” she breathes, “Thank you.” She pushes her sweaty hair off her face and pulls the band on. It’s just a piece of cloth that holds her hair back, but wearing it makes Wanda feel ready to take on Ultron, Strucker, Hydra, and anyone else that the team, the _Avengers_ , come across. “How do I look?” 

“Beautiful,” Pietro says and tries to look solemn but his eyes shine with happiness. “Even with the ridiculous makeup.”

Wanda laughs, remembering the smeared eyeliner, knowing that with all the sweating and crying, her eyes must look frightening. “At least I don’t have to shave my face,” she sniffs.

Pietro winces and runs his hand over the uneven stubble across his chin. Although his incredible speed turned the hair on his head white, his facial hair remains black. “We haven’t exactly had time for personal hygiene, Wanda,” he says, rolling his eyes. 

“Wanda, Pietro, we’ve gotta get moving!” Clint calls out to them as Steve shakes one of the police officer’s hands.

“What’s going on?”

Steve laughs tiredly. “Well Clint offered Serbian officials to let Pietro clean up the mess we made since he can probably do it in under ten minutes,” he says. Pietro makes an offended noise next to her. “But they turned him down. They just want us gone and to make sure that Ultron doesn’t come back. We’re leaving now.”

“We’re gonna rendezvous with the others at Stark – Iron Man’s – place in New York since he’s the one who might be able to track Ultron,” Clint says. 

Pietro’s fists clench, and when Clint and Steve have walked on ahead, he turns to her and says, “Are you sure you want to do this? We don’t know if the members of this so-called team will be as accepting of us as…” he trails off, realizing what he’s said. 

Wanda grins brightly. “As Clint and Steve. Admit it, you like them.” 

“I most certainly do not. I was just pointing out that they, well, they haven’t been as cruel as others might have been. In any case, we don’t know if the others will reject us or – ”

“ – Or accept our help. I know, Pietro. The thought’s crossed my mind, too. Clint’s been great, and Steve seems nice, but we don’t know anyone else. Maybe the rest of the team will hate us, and maybe America won’t be what we hope it is. But we won’t know until we try, and I think it’s worth taking a chance,” she says. She takes Pietro’s hand in hers and squeezes. “Will you take a chance with me?” 

Pietro looks taken aback for a moment, but his eyes soften in understanding and he tugs her closer, pressing a quick kiss to the top of her head. “Always,” he whispers.

Wanda is tired, her legs are sweaty and uncomfortable in her torn tights, her feet ache from the boots, and if Ultron decided to attack right that second, she wouldn’t be able to use her powers, much less run. 

But she’s happy. Pietro’s always said that they don’t need anyone other than themselves, that all they’ll ever need is each other, and that’s true. But maybe with Clint, Steve, and the rest of their friends, they might actually find a place where they finally belong, with other people to care about, a purpose in life, a _home_. 

She and Pietro walk arm in arm through the Serbian streets, their heads held high, as they make their way to their new lives with the Avengers. Wanda doesn’t know what’ll happen, what America will be like, where they’ll live, how they’ll stop Ultron and Hydra, but she does know that whatever happens, she and Pietro will face everything like they always have: together. 

The End.


End file.
